JOHN    EEDMOND'S 
LAST    YEAES 


BT 

STEPHEN    GWYNN 


NEW  YORK 

LONGMANS,    GREEN    &    CO. 

1919 

[All  rights  reHen'ttl] 


40943 


PREFACE 

In  writing  this  book,  I  liave  had  access  to  my  late  leader's 
papers  for  the  period  beginning  with  the  war.  These  were 
placed  at  my  disposal  by  his  son,  Major  William  Archer 
Redmond,  D.S.O.,  M.P.  I  had  also  the  consent  of  Mrs, 
Redmond  to  my  undertaking  the  task.  But  for  the  book 
and  for  the  opinions  expressed  in  it  I  am  solely  responsible. 
No  condition  having  been  imposed  upon  me,  it  seemed  best, 
for  many  reaisons,  that  it  should  be  written,  as  it  has  been 
written,  without  consultation, 

A  writer  in  whom  such  a  trust  has  been  placed  may  well  be 
at  a  loss  how  to  express  his  gratitude,  but  can  never  convey 
the  measure  of  his  anxiety.  From  those  who  cherish  Red- 
mond's memory,  and  especially  from  those  who  were  nearest 
to  him  in  comradeship  and  affection,  I  must  only  crave 
the  indulgence  which  should  be  accorded  to  sincere  effort. 
Differences  of  interpretation  there  will  be  in  any  review 
of  past  events,  and  others  can  claim  with  justice  that  on 
many  points  they  were  better  situated  for  full  understanding 
than  was  I.  Yet  for  the  period  which  is  specially  studied, 
if  there  is  failure  in  comi^rehension  it  cannot  be  excusetl 
by  lack  of  opportunity  to  be  thoroughly  informed. 

To  readers  at  large  I  would  say  this — that  if  any  sentence 
in  these  pages  be  uncandid  or  ungenerous,  it  is  most  imworthy 
to  be  found  in  the  record  of  such  a  man. 


CONTENTS 

CHATTER  rlGE 

I.  INTRODUCTORY        .  .  .  .  .1 

II.  REDMOND  AS  CHAIRMAN  .  .  .  .      23 

III.  THE   HOME   RULE   BILL   OF    1912  .  .  .62 

IV.  THE   RIVAL   VOLUNTEER   FORCES  .  .      90 
V.  WAR  IN   EUROPE    .                .                .  .  .126 

VI.      THE  RAISING  OF  THE  IRISH   BRIGADES  .  152 

VII.      THE  REBELLION   AND   ITS   SEQUEL  .  .  218 

VIII.      THE   CONVENTION   AND   THE   END  .  .  259 

INDEX  ......  343 

PORTRAIT  OF  JOHN   REDMOND     .  .     Frontiapiece 


Vii 


Shall  a  mau  understand. 
He  Eball  know  bittevness  because  his  kind, 
Being  perplexed  of  mind, 
Hold  issues  even  that  are  nothing  mated. 
And  he  shall  give 

Counsel  out  of  his  wisdom  that  none  shall  hear 
And  steadfast  in  vain  persuasion  must  he  live. 
And  unabated 
Shall  his  temptation  bu. 

John  Dbinkwaxeb,  in  Abnilium  Lincoln. 


JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 


CHAPTER  I 
INTRODUCTORY 


THE  time  has  not  yet  come  to  write  the  biography 
of  John  Redmond.  Not  until  the  history  of  the 
pledge-bound  Irish  Parliamentary  party  can  be  treated 
freely,  fully  and  impartially  as  a  chapter  closed  and 
ended  will  it  be  possible  to  record  in  detail  the  life  of 
a  man  who  was  associated  with  it  almost  from  its  begin- 
ning and  who  from  the  opening  of  this  century  guided 
it  with  almost  growing  authority  to  the  statutory  accom- 
plishment of  its  desperate  task  ;  who  knew,  in  it  and  for 
it,  all  vicissitudes  of  fortune  and  who  gave  to  it  without 
stint  or  reservation  his  whole  life's  energy  from  earliest 
manhood  to  the  grave. 

But  when  the  war  came,  unforeseen,  shifting  all 
political  balances,  transmuting  the  greatest  political 
issues,  especially  those  of  which  the  Irish  question  is 
a  type,  it  imposed  upon  men  and  upon  nations,  but  above 
all  on  the  leaders  of  nations,  swift  and  momentous 
decisions.  Because  that  critical  hour  presented  to  Red- 
mond's vi-sion  a  great  opportunity  which  he  must  either 
seize  single-handed  or  let  it  for  ever  pass  by  ;  because  he 
rose  to  the  height  of  the  occasion  with  the  courage  which 
counts  upon  and  commands  success  ;  because  he  sought 
by  his  own  motion  to  swing  the  whole  mass  and  weight 

2  1 


2  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST   YEARS 

of  a  nation's  feeling  into  a  ncAv  direction — for  all  these 
reasons  his  last  years  were  different  in  kind  from  any 
that  had  gone  before  ;  and  as  such  thej^  admit  of  and 
demand  separate  study.  Intelligent  comprehension  of 
what  he  aimed  ^  at,  what  he  achieved,  and  what  forces 
defeated  him  in  these  last  years  of  his  life  is  urgently 
needed,  not  for  the  sake  of  his  memor}-,  but  for  Ireland's 
sake  ;  because  until  his  policy  is  understood  there  is 
little  chance  that  Irishmen  should  attain  what  he  aspired 
to  win  for  Ireland — the  strength  and  dignity  of  a  free 
and  united  nation. 

It  is  of  Redmond's  polic}^  for  Ireland  in  relation  to 
the  war,  and  to  the  events  A\hicli  in  Ireland  arose  out 
of  the  war,  that  this  book  is  mainly  designed  to  treat. 
Yet  to  make  that  policy  intellig  ^^ome  history  is  needed 
of   the   startling   series   of   polit  developments   which 

the  war  interrupted  but  did  not  terminate — and  which, 
though  still  recent,  are  blurred  in  public  memory  by 
all  that  has  intervened.  Further  back  still,  a  brief 
review  of  his  early  career  must  be  given,  not  only  to 
set  the  man's  figure  in  relation  to  his  environment,  but 
to  show  that  this  final  phase  was  in  reality  no  new 
departure,  no  break  with  his  past,  but  a  true  though 
a  divergent  evolution  from  all  that  had  gone  before. 

Ireland,  although  so  small  in  extent  and  population, 
is  none  the  less  a  country  of  many  and  locally  varying 
racial  strains  ;  and  John  Redmond  sjjrang  from  one  of 
the  most  typical.  He  was  a  Wexfordman  ;  that  is  to 
say,  he  came  from  the  part  of  Ireland  where  if  you 
cross  the  Channel  there  is  least  difference  between  the 
land  you  leave  and  the  land  you  sail  to  ;  where  the 
sea-divided  peoples  have  been  always  to  some  extent 
assimilated.  Here  in  the  twelfth  century  the  first 
Norman-Welsh  invaders  came  across.  The  leader  of 
their  first  party,  Raymond  Le  Gros,  landed  at  a  point 
between  Wexford  and  Waterford  ;  the  town  of  Wexford 


INTRODUCTORY  3 

was  his  first  capture ;  and  where  he  began  Iii.s  con- 
quest he  settled.  From  this  stock  the  Redmond  name 
and  line  descend. 

Thus  John  Redmond  came  from  an  invading  strain 
in  which  Norman  and  Celt  were  already  blended  ;  and 
he  grew  up  in  a  country-  thickly  settled  with  men  whose 
ancestors  came  along  with  his  from  across  the  water. 
Till  a  century  ago  the  barony  of  Forth  retained  a  dialect 
of  its  own  which  was  in  effect  such  English  as  men  spoke 
before  Chaucer  began  to  write  ;  and  even  to-daj^  in  anj^ 
Wexford  fair  or  market  you  will  see  among  the  strong, 
well-nourished,  prosperous  farmers  many  faces  and  figures 
which  an  artist  might  easily  assimilate  to  an  atliletic 
example  of  the  traditicn-^l  John  Bull.  Redmond  himself, 
hawk-faced  and  thick-,  ('died,  might  have  been  taken 
for  no  bad  reincarnatieny^of  Raymond  Le  Gros.  To  this 
extent  he  was  less  of  a  Celt  than  many  of  his  country- 
men ;  but  he  was  assuredly  none  the  less  Irish  because 
he  was  a  Wexfordman.  The  county  of  his  birth  was 
the  county  w^hich  had  made  the  greatest  resistance  to 
English  power  in  Ireland  since  Sarsfield  and  his  "  Wild 
Geese  "  crossed  to  Flanders.  Born  in  1857,  he  grew  up 
in  a  country-side  full  of  memories  of  events  then  only 
some  sixty  years  old  ;  he  knew  and  spoke  with  many 
men  who  had  been  out  with  pike  or  fowling-piece  in  1798. 
Rebel  was  to  him  from  boyhood  up  a  name  of  honour  ; 
and  this  was  not  only  a  phase  of  boyish  enthusiasm. 
In  his  mature  manhood,  speaking  as  leader  of  the  Irish 
party,  he  told  the  House  of  Commons  plainly  that  in  his 
deliberate  judgment  Ireland's  situation  justified  an  aj)peal 
to  arms,  and  that  if  rebellion  offered  a  reasonable  prospect 
of  gaining  freedom  for  a  united  Ireland  he  would  counsel 
rebellion  on  the  instant. 

But  if  he  was  always  and  admittedly  a  potential 
rebel,  no  man  was  ever  less  a  revolutionary.  As  much  a 
constitutionalist  as  Hampden  or  Washington,  he  was  so 
by  temperament  and   by   inheritance.     The  tradition  of 


4  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

parliamentary  service  had  been  in  his  family  for  two 
generations.  Two  years  after  his  birth  his  great-uncle, 
John  Edward  Redmond,  from  whom  he  got  his  baptismal 
names,  was  elected  unopposed  as  Liberal  member  for 
the  borough  of  Wexford,  where  his  statue  stands  in  the 
market-place,  commemorating  good  service  rendered. 
Much  of  the  rich  flat  land  which  lies  along  the  railway 
from  Wexford  to  Rosslare  Harbour  was  reclaimed  by 
this  Redmond's  enterprise  from  tidal  slob.  On  his  death 
in  1872  the  seat  passed  to  his  nephew  William  Archer 
Redmond,  whose  two  sons  were  John  and  William 
Redmond,  with  whom  this  book  deals.  Thus  the  present 
Major  William  Archer  Redmond,  M.P.,  represents  four 
continuous  generations  of  the  same  family  sent  to 
Westminster  among  the  representatives  of  Nationalist 
Ireland. 

Not  often  is  a  family  type  so  strongly  marked  as  among 
the  men  of  tliis  stock.  But  the  portraits  show  that  while 
the  late  Major  "  Willie  "  Redmond  closely  resembled  his 
father,  in  John  Redmond  and  John  Redmond's  son  there 
were  reproduced  the  more  dominant  and  massive  features 
of  the  first  of  the  parliamentary  line. 

To  sum  lip  then,  John  Redmond  and  his  brother  came 
of  a  long  strain  of  Catholic  gentrj^  who  were  linked  by 
continuous  historic  association  of  over  seven  centuries  to 
a  certain  district  in  South  Leinster,  and  who  retained 
leadership  among  their  own  people.  The  tradition  of 
military  service  was  strong,  too,  in  this  family.  Their 
father's  cousin,  son  to  the  original  John  Edward  Redmond, 
was  a  professional  soldier  ;  and  their  mother  was  the 
daughter  of  General  Hoey.  They  were  brought  up  in 
an  old-fashioned  country  house,  Ballytrent,  on  the  Wexford 
coast,  and  the  habits  of  outdoor  country  life  and  sport 
which  furnished  the  chief  pleasure  of  their  lives  were 
formed  in  boyhood.  Their  upbringing  differed  from  that 
of  boys  in  thousands  of  similar  country  houses  through- 
out Ireland  only  in  one  circumstance  ;  they  were  Catholics, 


INTRODUCTORY  5 

and  even  so  lately  as  in  their  boyhood  Catholic  land- 
owners were  comparatively  few. 

John  Redmond  was  four  years  older  than  his  younger 
brother,  born  in  1861.  He  got  his  schooling  under  the 
Jesuits  at  Clongowes  in  early  days,  before  the  system 
of  Government  endowment  by  examination  results  had 
given  incentive  to  cramming.  According  to  his  own 
account  he  did  little  work  and  nobod}^  pressed  him  to 
exertion.  But  the  Jesuits  are  skilful  teachers,  and  they 
left  a  mark  on  his  mind.  It  is  scarcely  chance  tl\at  the 
two  speakers  of  all  I  have  heard  w  ho  had  the  best  delivery 
were  pupils  of  theirs — Redmond  and  Sir  William  Butler. 
They  taught  him  to  write,  they  tauglit  him  to  speak 
and  to  declaim,  they  encouraged  his  natural  love  of 
literature.  His  taste  was  formed  in  those  days  and  it 
was  curiously  old-fashioned.  His  diction  in  a  prepared 
oration  might  have  come  from  the  days  of  Grattan  : 
and  he  maintained  the  old-fashioned  habit  of  quotation. 
No  poetry  written  later  than  Byron,  INIoore  and  Shelley 
made  much  appeal  to  him,  save  the  Irish  political  ballads. 
But  scarcely  any  English  speaker  quoted  Shakespeare  in 
public  so  often  or  so  aptly  as  this  Irishman. 

From  Clongowes  he  went  to  Trinity  College,  Dublin, 
where  he  matriculated  in  October  1874  at  the  age  of 
seventeen.  His  academic  studies  seem  to  have  been 
half-hearted.  At  the  end  of  a  year  his  name  was  taken 
off  the  College  books  by  his  father,  but  was  replaced. 
At  the  close  of  his  second  year  of  study,  in  July  1876, 
it  was  removed  again  and  for  good. 

But  apart  from  what  he  learnt  at  school,  his  real  educa- 
tion was  an  apprenticeship  ;  he  was  trained  in  the  House 
of  Commons  for  the  work  of  Parliament.  He  was  a  boy 
of  fifteen,  of  an  age  to  be  keenly  interested,  when  the 
representation  of  Wexford  passed  from  his  great-uncle 
to  his  father.  Probably  the  reason  why  he  was  removed 
from  Trinity  College  was  the  desire  of  Mr.  William  Red- 
mond to  have  his  son  with  him  in  London.      Certainly 


6  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

John  Redmond  was  there  during  the  session  of  1876, 
for  on  the  introduction  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  second  Home 
Rule  Bill  ho  recalled  a  finely  apposite  Shakespearean 
quotation  which  he  had  heard  Butt  use  in  a  Home  Rule 
debate  of  that  j^ear.  In  May  1880  his  father  procured 
him  a  clerkship  in  the  House.  The  post  to  which  he  was 
assigned  was  that  of  attendant  in  the  Vote  Office,  so  that 
his  days  (and  a  great  part  of  his  nights)  were  spent  in 
the  two  little  rooms  which  open  off  the  Members'  Lobby, 
that  buzzing  centre  of  parliamentary  gossip,  activity 
and  intrigue.  Half  a  dozen  steps  only  separated  him 
from  the  door  of  the  Chamber  itself,  and  that  door  he 
was  always  privileged  to  pass  and  listen  to  the  debates, 
standing  by  the  entrance  outside  the  magical  strip  of 
matting  which  indicates  the  bar  of  the  House.  From 
this  point  of  vantage  he  watched  the  first  stages  of  a 
Parliament  in  which  Mr.  Gladstone  set  out  with  so  trium- 
phant a  majority — and  watched  too  tlie  inroads  made 
upon  the  power  and  prestige  of  that  majority  by  the 
new  parliamentary  force  whicli  had  come  into  V)eing. 

Redmond  himself  described  thus  (in  a  lecture  delivered 
at  New  York  in  1896)  the  policy  which  came  to  be  known 
as  "  The  New  Departure  "  : 

"  Mr.  Parnell  found  that  the  British  Parliament  in- 
sisted upon  turning  a  deaf  ear  to  liekmds  (.-hiim  for 
justice.  He  resolved  to  adopt  the  simple  yet  masterly 
device  of  preventing  Parliament  doing  any  work  at  all 
until  it  consented  to  hear."' 

In  the  task  of  systematic  and  continuous  obstruction 
Parnell  at  once  found  a  ready  helper,  Mr.  Joseph  Biggar. 
But  Parnell,  Biggar  and  those  wlio  from  1876  to  1880 
acted  generally  or  frequently  with  them  were  only  members 
of  the  body  led  by  Butt ;  though  they  were,  indeed, 
ultimately  in  more  or  less  open  revolt  against  Butt's 
leadership.  When  Butt  died,  and  was  at  least  nominally 
replaced    by   Mr.  Shaw,  the  growth  of    Parne'll's  ascen- 


INTRODUCTORY  7 

dancy  became  more  marked.  In  the  general  election  of 
1880  sixty  Home  Rulers  were  returned  to  Parliament  ; 
and  at  a  meeting  attended  by  over  forty,  twenty-three 
declared  for  Parnell  as  their  leader.  A  question  almost 
of  ceremonial  observance  immediately  defined  the  issue. 
Liberals  were  in  power,  and  Government  was  more  friendly 
to  Ireland's  claims  than  was  the  Opposition.  Mr.  Shaw 
and  his  adherents  were  for  marking  support  of  the  Govern- 
ment by  sitting  on  the  Government  side  of  the  Chamber. 
Parnell  insisted  that  the  Irish  party  should  be  independent 
of  all  English  attachments  and  permanently  in  opposi- 
tion till  Ireland  received  its  rights.  With  that  view  he 
and  his  friends  took  up  their  station  on  the  Speaker's 
left  below  the  gangway,  where  they  held  it  continuously 
for  thirty-nine  years. 

Mr.  William  Redmond  was  no  supporter  of  the  new 
policy.  As  the  little  group  which  Parnell  headed  grew 
more  and  more  insistent  in  their  obstruction,  the  member 
for  Wexford  spoke  less  and  less.  His  interventions  were 
rare  and  dignified.  In  the  debate  on  the  Address  in  the 
new  Parliament  of  1880  he  acted  as  a  lieutenant  to  Mr. 
Shaw.  Yet  he  was  on  very  friendly  terms  with  Parnell 
— almost  a  neighbour  of  his,  for  the  Parnell  property, 
lying  about  the  Vale  of  Ovoca,  touched  the  border  of 
Wexford. 

Mr.  William  Redmond's  career  in  that  Parliament 
was  soon  ended.  In  November  1880  he  died,  and, 
normally,  his  son,  whose  qualifications  and  ambitions 
were  known,  would  have  succeeded  him.  But  collision 
between  Government  and  the  Parnellite  party  was  already 
beginning.  Mr.  T.  M.  Healy,  then  Parnell's  secretary, 
had  been  arrested  for  a  speech  in  denunciation  of  some 
eviction  proceedings.  This  was  the  first  arrest  of  a 
prominent  man  under  Mr.  Forster's  rule  as  Chief  Secre- 
tary, and  Parnell,  with  whom  in  those  days  the  decision 
rested,  decided  that  ]Mr.  Healy  should  immediatelj^  be 
put  forward  for  the  vacant  seat.     In  later  davs  he  was 


8  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

to  remind  Mr.  Healy  how  he  had  done  this,  "  rebuking 
and  restraining  the  prior  right  of  my  friend,  Jack 
Redmond/'  Redmond  had  not  long  to  wait,  however. 
Another  vacancy  occurred  in  another  Wexford  seat,  the 
ancient  borough  of  New  Ross,  and  he  was  returned  without 
opposition  at  a  crucial  moment  in  the  parliamentary 
struggle. 

That  struggle  was  not  onlj^  parliamentary.  From  the 
famine  year  of  1879  onwards  a  fierce  agitation  had  begun, 
whose  purpose  was  to  secure  the  land  of  Ireland  to  the 
people  who  worked  it.  Davitt  was  to  the  land  what 
Parnell  was  to  the  parliamentarj^  campaign  :  but  it  was 
Parnell's  genius  which  fused  the  two  movements. 

To  meet  the  growing  power  of  the  Land  League,  Mr. 
Forster  demanded  a  Coercion  Bill,  and  after  long  struggles 
in  the  Cabinet  he  prevailed.  Against  this  Bill  it  was 
obvious  that  all  means  of  parliamentary  resistance  would 
be  used  to  the  uttermost. 

They  were  still  of  a  primitive  simplicity.  In  the  days 
before  Parnell  the  House  of  Commons  had  carried  on 
its  business  under  a  system  of  rules  which  worked  per- 
fectly well  because  there  was  a  general  disposition  in 
the  assembly  to  get  business  done.  A  beginning  of  the 
new  order  was  made  when  a  group  of  ex-military  men 
attempted  to  defeat  the  measure  for  abolishing  purchase 
of  commissions  in  the  Army  by  a  series  of  dilatory  motions. 
This,  however,  was  an  isolated  occurrence.  Any  English 
member  who  set  himself  to  thwart  the  desire  of  the 
House  for  a  conclusion  by  using  means  which  the  general 
body  considered  unfair  would  have  been  reduced  to 
quiescence  by  a  demonstration  that  he  was  considered 
a  nuisance.  His  voice  would  have  been  drowned  in  a 
buzz  of  conversation  or  by  less  civil  interruptions.  This 
implied,  however,  a  willingness  to  be  influenced  by  social 
considerations,  and,  more  than  that,  a  loyalty  to  the 
traditions  and  purposes  of  the  House.  Parnell  felt  no 
such    willingness    and    acknowledged    no    such    loyalty. 


INTRODUCTORY  9 

**  His  object,"  said  Redmond  in  the  address  already 
quoted,  "  was  to  injure  it  so  long  as  it  refused  to  listen 
to  the  just  claims  of  his  country."  The  House,  realizing 
Parnell's  intention,  visited  upon  him  and  his  associates 
all  the  penalties  by  which  it  was  wont  to  enforce  its 
wishes  :  but  the  penalties  had  no  sting.  All  the  displays 
of  anger,  disapproval,  contempt,  all  the  vocabulary  of 
denunciation  in  debate  and  in  the  Press,  all  the  studied 
forms  of  insult,  all  the  marks  of  social  displeasure,  only 
served  to  convince  the  Irishmen  that  they  were  producing 
their  effect.  Still,  the  House  continued  to  act  on  the 
assumption  that  it  could  vindicate  its  traditions  in  the 
old  traditional  way  :  it  was  determined  to  change  none 
of  the  rules  which  had  stood  for  so  many  generations  : 
it  would  maintain  its  liberties  and  put  doAvn  in  its  own 
way  those  who  had  the  impertinence  to  abuse  them. 
The  breaking-point  came  exactly  at  the  moment  when 
Redmond  was  elected. 

On  Monday,  Jan.  24th,  1881,  Mr.  Forster  introduced  his 
Coercion  Bill.  It  was  open,  of  course,  to  any  member 
to  speak  once,  and  once  onlj^  on  the  main  motion.  But 
every  member  had  an  indefinite  right  to  move  the  adjourn- 
ment of  the  debate,  and  on  each  such  motion  every  member 
could  speak  again.  The  debate  was  carried  all  tlirough 
that  week.  It  was  resumed  on  Monday,  31st.  The 
declaration  of  Redmond's  election  was  fixed  for  Tuesday, 
February  1st,  in  New  Ross — there  being  no  contest.  A 
telegram  summoned  him  to  come  instantl}^  after  the 
declaration  to  London.  He  took  the  train  at  noon, 
travelled  to  Dublin  and  crossed  the  Channel.  At  Holy- 
head about  midnight  another  telegram  told  him  that 
the  debate  was  still  proceeding.  He  reached  Euston  on 
the  Wednesday  morning,  drove  straight  to  the  House,  and 
there,  standing  at  the  bar,  saw  what  he  thus  described  : 

"  It  was  thus,  travel-stained  and  weary,  that  I  first 
presented  myself  as  a  member  of  the  British  Parliament. 
The  House  was  still  sitting,  it  had  been  sitting  without 


10  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

a  break  for  over  forty  hours,  and  I  shnll  never  forget 
the  appearance  the  Chamber  presented.  The  floor  was 
littered  with  paper.  A  few  dishevelled  and  weary  Irish- 
men were  on  one  side  of  tlie  House,  about  a  hundred 
infuriated  Englishmen  upon  the  other  ;  some  of  them 
still  in  evening  dress,  and  wearing  what  were  once  white 
shirts  of  the  night  before  last.  Mr.  Parnell  was  upon 
his  legs,  with  pale  cheeks  and  drawn  face,  his  hands 
clenched  behind  his  back,  facing  without  flinching  a 
continuous  roar  of  interruption.  It  was  now  about 
eight  o'clock.  Half  of  Mr.  Parnell's  followers  were  out 
of  the  Chamber  snatching  a  few  moments'  sleep  in  chairs 
in  the  Library  or  Smoke  Room.  Those  who  remained 
had  each  a  specified  period  of  time  allotted  him  to  speak, 
and  they  were  wearily  waiting  their  turn.  As  they 
caught  sight  of  me  standing  at  the  bar  of  the  House 
of  Commons  there  was  a  clieer  of  welcome.  1  was  unable 
to  come  to  their  aid,  however,  as  under  the  rules  of  the 
House  I  could  not  take  my  seat  until  the  commence- 
ment of  a  new  sitting.  My  very  presence,  however, 
brought,  I  think,  a  sense  of  encouragement  and  approach- 
ing relief  to  them  ;  and  I  stood  there  at  the  bar  with 
my  travelling  coat  still  upon  me,  gazing  alternately 
with  indignation  and  admiration  at  the  amazing  scene 
presented  to  my  gaze. 

"This,  then,  was  the  great  Parliament  of  England  !  Of 
intelligent  debate  there  was  none.  It  A\as  one  unbroken 
scene  of  turbulence  and  disorder.  The  few  Irishmen 
remained  quiet,  too  much  amused,  perhaps,  or  too  much 
exhausted  to  retaliate.  It  was  the  English — the  Uiembers 
of  the  first  assembly  of  gentlemen  in  Europe,  as  they 
love  to  style  it — who  howled  and  roared,  and  almost 
foamed  at  the  mouth  with  rage  at  the  calm  and  pale- 
featiu'ed  young  man  who  stood  patiently  facing  them 
and   endeavouring   to   make   himself  heard." 

An  hour  later  the  closure  was  applied,  for  the  first 
time  in  Parliament's  history.  The  records  of  Hansard 
spoil  a  story  which  Redmond  was  fond  of  telling — that 
he  took  his  oath  and  his  seat,  made  his  maiden  speech 
and  was  suspended  all  in  the  same  evening.  In  point 
of  fact  he  took  his  seat  that  Wednesday  afternoon,  when 
the  House  sat  for  a  few  hours  only  and  adjourned  again. 


INTRODUCTORY  11 

Next  day  news  came  in  that  Davitt  had  been  arrested 
in  Ireland.  Mr.  Dillon,  in  the  process  of  endeavouring 
to  extract  an  explanation  from  the  Government,  was 
named  and  suspended.  When  the  Prime  Minister  after 
this  rose  to  speak,  Mr.  Parnell  moved  :  "  That  Mr. 
Gladstone  be  not  heard.'" 

The  Speaker,  ruling  that  Mr.  Gladstone  was  in  posses- 
sion of  the  House,  refused  to  put  the  motion.  Mr. 
Parnell,  insisting  that  his  motion  should  be  put,  came 
into  collision  with  the  authority  of  the  Chair  and  was 
formally  "  named."  Mr.  Gladstone  then  moved  his  sus- 
pension and  a  division  was  called — whereupon,  under  the 
rules  which  then  existed,  all  members  were  bound  to 
leave  the  Chamber.  On  this  occasion  the  Irish  members 
remained  seated,  as  a  protest,  and  after  the  division  the 
Speaker  solemnly  reported  this  breach  of  order  to  the 
House.  For  their  refusal  to  obey  the  Irish  members 
present  were  suspended  from  the  service  of  the  House, 
and  as  a  body  they  refused  to  leave  unless  removed  by 
physical  force.  Accordingly,  man  by  man  was  ordered 
to  leave  and  each  in  turn  rose  up  with  a  brief  phrase  of 
refusal,  after  which  the  Sergeant-at-Arms  with  an  officer 
approached  and  laid  a  hand  on  the  recusant's  shoulder. 
Redmond,  when  his  turn  came,  said  : 

"  As  I  regard  the  whole  of  these  proceedings  as  un- 
mitigated despotism,  I  beg  respectfully  to  decline  to 
withdraw." 

That  was  his  maiden  speech.  Having  delivered  it, 
"  Mr.  Redmond,"  says  Hansard,  "  was  by  desire  of  Mr. 
Speaker  removed  by  the  Sergeant-at-Arms  from  the 
House."  It  was  a  strange  beginning  for  one  of  the 
greatest  parliamentarians  of  our  epoch — and  one  of 
the  greatest  conservatives.  The  whole  bent  of  his  mind 
was  towards  moderation  in  all  things.  Temperamentally, 
he  hated  all  forms  of  extravagant  eccentricity  ;  he  loved 
the  old  if  only  because  it  was  old  ;  he  had  the  keenest 
sense  not  only  of  decorum  but  of  the  essential  dignity 


12  JOHN   REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

which  is  the  best  guardian  of  order.  Yet  here  he  was 
eommitted  to  a  policy  which  aimed  deliberately  at  out- 
raging all  the  established  decencies — at  disregarding 
ostentatiously  all  the  usages  by  which  an  assembly  of 
gentlemen  had  regulated  their  proceedings. 

What  is  more,  it  was  an  assembly  which  Redmond 
found  temperamentally  congenial  to  him — an  assembly 
which,  apart  from  its  relation  to  Ireland,  he  thoroughly 
admired  and  liked.  In  1896,  when  Irish  members  were 
fiercely  in  opposition  to  the  Government,  he  concluded 
his  description  of  Parliament  with  these  words  : 

"In  the  main,  the  House  of  Commons  is,  I  believe, 
dominated  by  a  rough-and-ready  sense  of  manliness 
and  fair-play.  Of  course,  I  am  not  speaking  of  it  as  a 
governing  body.  In  that  character  it  has  been  towards 
Ireland  always  ignorant  and  nearly  always  unfair.  I 
am  treating  it  simply  as  an  assembly  of  men,  and  I  say 
of  it,  it  is  a  body  where  sooner  or  later  every  man  finds 
his  proper  level,  wliere  mediocrity  and  insincerity  will 
never  permanently  succeed,  and  w  here  ability  and  honesty 
of  purpose  will  never  ^permanently  fail.'' 

That  was  no  mean  tribute,  coming  from  one  who  held 
himself  aloof  from  all  the  personal  advantages  belonging 
to  the  society  whose  rules  he  did  not  recognize.  The 
oj)inion  to  which  the  Irish  members  of  Parnell's  following 
were  amenable  was  not  juade  at  Westminster  ;  it  did 
not  exist  there — exce])t,  and  that  in  its  most  rigid  form, 
amongst  themselves. 

It  is  worth  while  to  recall  for  English  readers — and 
perhaps  not  for  tliem  only— what  membership  of  Parnell's 
party  involved.  In  the  first  place,  there  was  a  self- 
denying  ordinance  by  which  the  man  elected  to  it  bound 
himself  to  accept  no  post  of  any  kind  under  Government. 
All  the  chances  which  election  to  Parliament  opens  to 
most  men — and  especially  to  men  of  the  legal  profession 
— were  at  once  set  aside.  Absolute  discipline  and  unity 
of  action,  except  in  matters  specially  left  open  to  individual 


INTRODUCTORY  13 

judgment,  were  enforced  on  all.  These  were  the  essentials. 
But  in  the  period  of  acute  war  between  the  Irish  and 
all  other  parties  which  was  opening  when  Redmond 
entered  there  was  a  self-imposed  rule  that  as  the  English 
public  and  English  members  disapproved  and  disliked 
the  Irishmen  an  answering  attitude  should  be  adopted  : 
that  even  private  hosjHtality  should  be  avoided  and  that 
the  belligerents  should  behave  as  if  they  were  quite 
literally  in  an  enemy's  country. 

Later,  when  Mr.  Gladstone  had  adopted  the  Irish 
cause  and  alliance  with  the  Liberal  party  had  begun, 
the  rigour  of  this  attitude  ^Aas  modified.  Many  Irish 
members  joined  the  Liberal  clubs  and  went  freelj''  to 
houses  where  they  were  sure  of  sympathy.  Yet  neither 
of  the  Redmonds  followed  far  in  this  direction,  and 
the  habit  of  social  isolation  which  they  formed  in  their 
early  days  lasted  with  them  to  tlie  end.  If  John  Redmond 
ever  went  to  any  house  in  London  which  was  not  an  Irish 
home  it  was  by  the  rarest  exception. 

For  society,  Parnell's  party  depended  on  themselves 
and  their  countrymen  and  sympathizers.  But  they  Avere 
in  no  way  to  be  pitied  ;  they  were  the  best  of  company 
for  one  another.  It  was  a  movement  of  the  young,  it 
had  all  the  strength  and  audacity  of  youth,  it  was  a  great 
adventure.  A  few  men  from  an  older  generation  came 
with  them,  Mr,  Biggar,  Justin  McCarthy  and  others. 
But  their  leader,  though  older  than  most  of  his  followers, 
was  a  young  man  by  parliamentary  standards.  In 
1880  Parnell  was  only  thirty-three  ;  and  within  four 
years  more  he  was  as  great  a  power  in  the  House  as  Mr. 
Gladstone.  Some  few  years  back  I  heard  Willie  Redmond 
say  in  tlie  Members'  smoking-room,  "  Isn't  it  strange 
to  think  that  Parnell  would  be  sixty  now  if  he  had  lived. 
I  can't  imagine  him  as  an  old  man."  Yet  the  accent  of 
maturity  was  on  Parnell's  leadership  ;  the  men  whom 
he  led  were  essentially  young.  In  1881,  when  Redmond 
entered   Parliament,   Mr.   JiLll^nwas   thirty,   Mr.   T.   P. 

A  C .       T  -v  .  '  ^'  t-  V  j^ 


V        7^  B    ,  _ 


14  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

O'Connor  and  Mr.  Sexton  veterans  of  thirty-three,  Mr. 
Healy  twenty-six.  Mr.  William  O'Brien  (who  did  not 
come  in  until  1883)  was  of  the  same  year  as  Mr.  Dillon. 
Redmond  was  younger  than  any  of  them,  being  elected 
at  the  age  of  twenty-four.  Yet  nobody  then  thought  it 
surprising  that  he  should  be  sent  in  1882  to  represent 
the  party  on  a  mission  to  Australia  and  the  United  States 
at  a  most  difficult  time.  The  Phoenix  Park  murders  had 
created  widespread  indiscriminating  anger  against  all 
Irish  Nationalists  throughout  the  Empire,  and  Redmond 
found  it  difficult  to  secure  even  a  hall  to  speak  in.  For 
support  there  was  sent  to  him  his  brother,  then  a  youth 
of  twenty-one,  and  feeling  ran  so  strong  against  the 
two  that  the  Prime  Minister  of  New  South  Wales  (Sir 
Henry  Parkes)  proposed  their  exjDulsion  from  the  colony. 
Nevertheless,  Redmond  made  good.  "  The  Irish  working- 
men  stood  by  me,"  he  said,  "  and  in  fact  saved  the  situa- 
tion." Fifteen  thousand  pounds  were  collected  before 
they  left  the  island  continent. 

It  indicates  well  the  changed  conditions  to  remember 
that  when  in  1 906  Mr.  Hazleton  and  the  late  T.  M.  Kettle 
were  selected  to  go  on  a  far  less  arduous  and  difficult 
mission  to  America,  there  was  much  talk  about  the 
astonishing  youth  of  our  representatives,  Y^et  both 
were  then  older  than  John  Redmond  was  in  1882 — to 
say  nothing  of  his  brother,  who  must  have  been  the  most 
exuberantly  youthful  spokesman  that  a  serious  cause 
ever  found. 

The  Redmonds'  stay  in  Australia,  which  lasted  over 
a  year,  determined  one  important  matter  for  both  young 
men  ;  they  found  their  wives  in  the  colony  whose  Prime 
Minister  proposed  to  exj^el  them.  John  Redmond  married 
Miss  Joanna  Dalton  and  his  brother  her  near  kinswoman, 
Miss  Eleanor  Dalton.  Willie  Redmond  was  elected  to 
Parliament  in  his  absence  for  his  father's  old  seat — Mr. 
Healy  having  vacated  Wexford  to  fight  and  win  a  sensa- 
tional election  in  county  Monaghan. 


INTRODUCTORY  15 

This  early  visit  to  the  great  transmarine  dominions, 
and  the  ties  which  he  formed  there,  left  a  marked  impres- 
sion on  John  Redmond's  mind,  which  was  reinforced 
by  other  visits  in  later  years,  and  by  all  the  growing 
associations  that  linked  him  to  life  and  politics  in  the 
dominions.  Redmond  knew  vastly  more,  and  in  truth 
cared  vastly  more,  about  the  British  Empire  than  most 
Imperialists.  His  affection  was  not  based  on  any  in- 
herited prejudice,  nor  inspired  by  a  mere  geographical 
idea.  He  was  attracted  to  that  which  he  had  seen  and 
handled,  in  Mhose  making  he  had  watched  so  many  of 
his  fellow-countrymen  fruitfully  and  honourably  busy. 
He  felt  acutely  tliat  the  Empire  belonged  to  Irish  Nation- 
alists at  least  as  much  as  to  English  Tories.  America 
also  was  familiar  to  him,  and  he  had  every  cause  to  be 
grateful  to  the  United  States  ;  but  his  interest  in  the 
dominions  was  of  a  different  kind.  He  felt  himself  a 
partner  in  their  glories,  and  by  this  feeling  he  was  linked 
in  sympathy  to  a  great  many  elements  in  British  life 
that  were  otherwise  uncongenial  to  him — and  was,  on 
the  other  hand,  divided  in  sympathy  from  some  who 
in  Irish  politics  were  his  staunch  supf)orters.  He  could 
never  understand  the  psychology  of  the  Little  Englander. 
"  If  I  were  an  Englishman,"  he  once  said  to  me,  "  I 
should  be  the  greatest  Imperialist  living."  From  first  to 
last  his  attitude  was  that  which  is  indicated  by  a  passage 
of  his  speech  on  Mr.  Gladstone's  first  Home  Rule  Bill  : 

"As  a  Nationalist,  I  may  say  I  do  not  regard  as 
entirely  palatable  the  idea  that  for  ever  and  a  day 
Ireland's  voice  should  be  excluded  from  the  councils  of 
an  Empire  which  the  genius  and  valour  of  her  sons 
have  done  so  much  to  build  up  and  of  which  she  is 
to  remain  a  part."  ' 

1  This  speech  is  iuckided  in  "  Home  Riile :  Speeches  of  John 
Redmond,  M.P.,'*  a  vokune  edited  in  1010  by  Mr.  Barry  O'Brien. 
It  contains  also  the  American  addiesses  quoted  in  this  chapter,  and 
a  speech  to  the  DubUn  Convention  in  1907,  quoted  in  the  next. 


16  JOHN   REDMOND'S   LAST   YEARS 


II 

To  follow  in  detail  Redmond's  career  under  Parnell's 
leadership  would  be  beyond  the  scope  of  this  book.  Less 
conspicuous  in  Parliament  than  such  lieutenants  of  "  the 
Chief  "  as  Mr.  Sexton,  Mr.  Dillon  and  Mr.  Healy,  John 
Redmond  acted  as  one  of  the  party  whips  and  was  in 
much  demand  outside  Parliament  as  a  platform  speaker. 
In  August  1886  he  was  once  more  sent  overseas  to  attend 
the  Convention  of  the  Irish  Race  at  Chicago.  He  had 
to  tell  his  hearers  of  victory  and  of  repulse. 

"  When  you  last  assembled  in  Convention,  two  years 
ago,  the  Irish  party  in  Parliament  did  not  number  more 
than  forty  ;  to-day  we  hold  five-sixths  of  the  Irish  seats, 
and  speak  in  the  name  of  five-sixths  of  the  Irish  people 
in  Ireland.  Two  years  ago  we  had  arrayed  against  us 
all  English  political  parties  and  every  English  statesman  ; 
to-day  we  have  on  our  side  one  of  the  great  English 
political  parties,  which,  though  its  past  traditions  in 
Ireland  have  been  evil,  still  represents  the  party  of  pro- 
gress in  England,  and  the  greatest  statesman  of  the  day, 
who  has  staked  his  all  upon  winning  for  Ireland  her 
national  rights.  Two  years  ago  England  had  in  truth, 
in  Mitchel's  phrase,  the  ear  of  the  world.  To-day,  at 
last,  that  ear,  so  long  poisoned  with  calumnies  of  our 
peofjle,  is  now  open  to  the  voice  of  Ireland.  Two  years 
ago  the  public  opinion  of  the  world — aye,  and  even  of 
this  free  land  of  America — was  doubtful  as  to  the  justice 
of  our  movement  ;  to-day  the  opinion  of  the  civilized 
world,  and  of  America  in  particular,  is  clearly  and  dis- 
tinctly on  our  side." 

On  the  other  hand,  in  England  the  forces  of  reaction 
had  succeeded.  The  Home  Rule  Bill  had  been  defeated 
and  the  Liberal  party  broken  up.  A  Government  was 
in  power  whose  programme  was  one  of  coercion.  But 
Ireland,  Redmond  said,  was  ready  for  the  fight  and  con- 
fident that  with  the  weapons  at  command  the  enemy 
could  be  defeated. 


INTRODUCTORY  17 

Who  were  the  enemy,  and  what  the  weapon  ?  His 
speech  made  this  plain. 

*'  Once  more  Irish  landlords  have  behaved  themselves 
with  unaccountable  folly  and  stupidity.  They  have 
once  more  stood  between  Ireland  and  her  freedom,  and 
have  refused  even  an  extravagant  price  for  the  land 
because  the  offer  was  coupled  with  the  concession  of 
an  Irish  Parliament.  So  be  it.  I  believe  the  last  offer 
has  been  made  to  Irish  landlordism.  The  ultimate 
settlement  of  this  question  must  now  be  reserved  for 
the  Parliament  of  Ireland,  and  meantime  the  people 
must  take  care  to  protect  themselves  and  their  children. 
In  many  parts  of  Ireland,  I  assert,  rent  is  to-day  an 
impossibility,  and  in  ever}'  part  of  Ireland  the  rents 
demanded  are  exorbitant,  and  will  not,  and  cannot, 
be  paid." 

He  was  wrong.  The  settlement  of  this  vast  question 
was  to  be  accomplished  through  the  Imperial  Parliament, 
not  the  Irish.  Yet  it  was  accomplished  in  essence  by 
an  agreement  between  Irishmen  for  which  Redmond 
himself  was  largely  responsible. 

That  settlement,  however,  merely  ratified  in  1903  the 
final  stage  in  the  conversion  of  both  countries  to  Parnell's 
policy  of  State-aided  land  purchase.  Tentative  begin- 
nings were  made  with  it  under  the  Government  which  was 
in  power  from  1886  to  1892  ;  but  the  main  characteristic 
of  this  period  was  a  fierce  revival  of  the  land  war.  It 
was  virulent  in  Wexford,  and  in  1888  Redmond  shared 
the  experience  which  few  Irish  members  escaped  or 
desired  to  escape  ;  he  was  sentenced  to  imprisonment 
on  a  charge  of  intimidation  for  a  speech  condemning 
some  evictions.  He  and  his  brother  met  in  Wexford 
jail,  and  both  used  to  describe  with  glee  their  mutual 
salutation  :  "  Good  heavens,  what  a  ruffian  you  look  !  " 
Cropped  hair  and  convict  clothes  were  part  of  Mr.  Balfour's 
resolute  government. 

Yet  in  those  daj^s  Ireland  was  winning,  and  winning 
fast.     Mr.  Gladstone's  personal  ascendancy,  never  stronger 

3 


18  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

than  in  the  wonderful  effort  of  his  old  age,  asserted  itself 
more  and  more.  Public  sympathy  in  Great  Britain 
was  turning  against  the  wholesale  evictions,  the  knocking 
down  of  peasants'  houses  by  police  and  military  with 
battering-rams.  The  Tory  party  sought  for  a  new  poli- 
tical weapon,  and  one  day  The  Times  came  out  with  the 
facsimile  of  what  purported  to  be  a  letter  in  Parnell's 
hand.  This  document  implied  at  least  condonation  of 
the  Phoenix  Park  murders. 

Other  letters  equally  incriminating  were  published. 
Parnell  denied  the  authorship,  his  denial  was  not  accepted  ; 
fierce  controversy  ended  in  the  establishment  of  one  of 
the  strangest  Commissions  of  Enquiry  ever  set  up — 
a  semi- judicial  tribunal  of  judges.  Its  proceedings  created 
the  acutest  public  interest,  drawn  out  over  long  months, 
up  to  the  day  when  Sir  Charles  Russell  had  before  him 
in  the  witness-box  the  original  vendor  of  the  letters 
— one  Pigott.  Pigott's  collapse,  confession  of  forgery, 
flight  and  suicide,  followed  with  appalling  swiftness : 
and  the  result  was  to  generate  through  England  a  very 
strong  sympathy  for  the  man  against  whom,  and  against 
whose  followers,  such  desperate  calumnies  had  been 
uttered  and  exploited.  Parnell's  prestige  was  no  longer 
confined  to  his  own  countrymen  :  and  the  sense  of  all 
Home  Rulers  was  that  they  fought  a  winning  battle, 
under  two  allied  leaders  of  extraordinary  personal  gifts. 

Then,  as  soon  as  it  was  clear  that  the  attack  of  the 
Pigott  letters  had  recoiled  on  those  who  launched  it, 
came  the  indication  of  a  fresh  menace.  Proceedings  for 
divorce  were  taken  with  Parnell  as  the  co-respondent : 
the  case  was  undefended.  Mr.  Gladstone  and  probably 
most  Englishmen  expected  that  Parnell  would  retire, 
at  all  events  temporarily,  from  public  life,  as,  in  Lord 
Morley's  words,  "  any  English  politician  of  his  rank  " 
would  have  been  obliged  to  do.  Parnell  refused  to 
retire  ;  and  Gladstone  made  it  publicly  known  that  if 
Parnell  continued  to  lead  the  Irish  party,  his  own  leader- 


INTRODUCTORY  19 

ship  of  the  Liberal  party,  "  based,  as  it  had  been,  mainly 
on  the  prosecution  of  the  Irish  cause,"  would  be  rendered 
"  almost  a  nullity."  The  choice — for  it  was  a  choice — 
was  left  to  the  Irish.  To  retain  Parnell  as  leader  in 
Gladstone's  judgment  made  Gladstone's  task  impossible, 
and  therefore  indicated  Gladstone's  withdrawal  from 
public  life.  To  part  with  Parnell  meant  parting  with 
the  ablest  leader  that  Nationalist  Ireland  had  ever  found. 
A  more  heartrending  alternative  has  never  been  im- 
j)osed  on  any  body  of  politicians,  and  John  Redmond, 
unlike  his  younger  brother,  was  not  of  those  to  whom 
decision  came  by  an  instinctive  act  of  allegiance.  His 
nature  forced  him  to  see  both  sides,  but  when  he  decided 
it  was  with  his  whole  nature.  The  issue  was  debated 
by  the  Irish  party  in  Committee  Room  15  of  the  House 
of  Commons,  with  the  Press  in  attendance.  In  this 
encounter  Redmond  for  the  first  time  stepped  to  the  front. 
He  had  hitherto  been  outside  the  first  flight  of  Irish 
parliamentarians.  Now,  he  was  the  first  to  state  the 
case  for  maintaining  Parnell's  leadership,  and  through- 
out the  discussions  he  led  on  that  side.  When  Parnell's 
death  came  a  few  months  after  the  "  split  "  declared 
itself,  there  was  no  hesitation  as  to  which  of  the 
Parnellites  should  assume  the  leadership  of  their  party. 
Redmond  resigned  his  seat  in  North  Wexford  and  con- 
tested Cork  city,  where  Parnell  had  long  been  member. 
He  was  badly  beaten,  and  for  some  three  months  the 
new  leader  of  the  Parnellites  was  without  a  seat  in  the 
House — though  not  during  a  session.  Another  death 
made  a  new  opening,  and  in  December  1891  his  fight 
at  Waterford  against  no  less  a  man  than  Michael  Davitt 
turned  for  a  moment  the  electoral  tide  which  was  setting 
heavily  against  the  smaller  group.  It  was  a  notable 
win,  and  the  hero  of  that  triumph  retained  his  hold  on 
the  loyalty  of  those  with  whom  he  won  it  when  the  rest 
of  Ireland  had  turned  away  from  him.  The  tie  lasted 
to  his  death — and  after  it,  for  Waterford  then  chose  as 


20  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

its  representative  the  dead  leader's  son,  and  renewed 
that  choice  in  the  general  election  of  1918,  when  other 
allegiances  to  the  old  party  were  like  leaves  on  the 
wind. 

Other  ties  were  formed  in  these  years,  which  lasted 
through  Redmond's  life.  I  have  deliberately  abstained 
from  entering  into  either  the  merits  or  the  details  of  the 
"  split."  But  certain  of  its  aspects  must  be  recognized. 
In  the  division  into  Parnellites  and  Anti-Parnellites, 
Parnellites  were  a  small  but  fierce  minority.  It  needed 
resolution  for  a  man  to  be  a  Parnellite,  all  the  more 
because  the  whole  force  of  the  Catholic  Church  was  thrown 
against  them,  and  in  some  instances  disgraceful  methods 
were  used.  One  of  Redmond's  best  friends  was  the 
owner  of  a  local  newspaper  ;  it  was  declared  to  be  a 
mortal  sin  to  buy,  sell,  or  read  his  journal.  The  business 
was  reduced  to  the  verge  of  ruin  but  the  man  went  on, 
till  a  new  bishop  came  and  gradually  things  mended. 
He,  like  Redmond,  was  a  staunch  practising  Catholic, 
and  later  on  was  the  friend  and  trusted  associate  of  many 
priests  ;  but  he  stood  for  an  element  in  Ireland  which 
refused  to  allow  the  least  usurpation  by  ecclesiastical 
authority  in  the  sphere  of  citizenship. 

Willie  Redmond  won  East  Clare,  as  his  brother  won 
Waterford  city,  after  a  turbulent  election  with  the  priests 
against  him.  He  gave  in  that  contest,  as  always,  at 
least  as  good  as  he  got ;  but  his  collision  with  individuals 
never  affected  his  devotion  or  his  brother's  to  their 
Church. 

But  in  social  life  the  estrangements  of  these  days  were 
far-reaching,  and,  at  least  negatively,  so  far  as  Redmond 
was  concerned,  they  were  lasting.  His  existence  had 
been  saddened  and  altered  shortly  before  the  break  up 
by  the  death  of  his  first  wife,  which  left  him  a  young 
widower  with  three  children.  After  the  "  split "  the  whole 
circle  of  friends  among  whom  he  had  lived  in  Dublin 
and  in    London    was   shattered    and    divided ;    and   in 


INTRODUCTORY  21 

later  life  none,  I  think,  of  those  broken  intimacies  was 
renewed. 

In  Redmond's  nature  there  was  a  total  lack  of  rancour. 
Clear-sighted  as  he  was,  he  realized  how  desperately 
difficult  a  choice  was  imposed  on  Nationalists  by  Parnell's 
situation,  and  he  knew  how  honestly  men  had  differed. 
He  could  command  completely  his  intellectual  judgment 
of  their  action,  and  there  were  many  whom  in  later  stages 
of  the  movement  he  trusted  none  the  less  for  their  diver- 
gence from  him  at  this  crisis.  But  he  was  more  than 
commonly  a  creature  of  instinct ;  and  the  associations 
of  his  intimate  life  were  all  decided  in  these  years.  His 
affection  was  given  to  those  who  were  comrades  in  this 
pass  of  danger.  The  only  two  exceptions  to  be  made 
are,  first  and  chiefly,  Mr.  Devlin,  who  was  too  young 
to  be  actively  concerned  with  politics  at  the  time  of 
Parnell's  overthrow ;  and,  to  speak  truth,  it  is  not 
possible  to  be  so  closely  associated  as  Redmond  was 
with  this  lieutenant  of  his,  or  to  be  so  long  and  loyally 
served  by  him,  and  not  to  undergo  his  personal  attrac- 
tion. The  other  exception  is  Mr.  J.  J.  Mooney,  who 
entered  Parliament  and  politics  later  than  the  "  split," 
but  whose  personal  allegiance  to  Mr.  Redmond  was 
always  declared.  He  acted  for  long  as  Redmond's  secre- 
tary and  always  as  his  counsellor — for  in  all  the  detail 
of  parliamentary  business,  especially  on  the  side  of  private 
bill  legislation,  the  House  had  few  more  capable  members. 
He  was  perhaps  more  completely  than  Mr.  Devlin  one 
of  the  little  group  of  intimates  with  whom  Redmond 
loved  to  surround  himself  in  the  country.  All  the  rest 
were  old  champions  of  the  fight  over  Parnell's  body  ; 
but  by  far  the  closest  friend  of  all  was  his  brother  Willie. 
Their  marriages  to  kinswomen  had  redoubled  the  tie 
of  blood. 

It  should  be  noted  here  that  Redmond  married  for 
the  second  time  in  1899,  after  ten  years  of  widowerhood. 
His  wife  was,  by  his  wish  and  her  own,  never  at  all  in 


22  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST   YEARS 

the  public  eye.  All  that  should  be  said  here  is  that  his 
friends  found  friendship  with  him  easier  and  not  more 
difficult  than  before  this  marriage,  and  were  grateful 
for  the  devoted  care  which  was  besiowed  upon  their 
leader.  She  accompanied  him  on  all  his  political  journey- 
ings,  whatever  their  duration,  and  gave  him  in  the  fullest 
measure  the  companionship  which  he  desired. 


CHAPTER   II 
REDMOND  AS  CHAIRMAN 


THE  Parliament  of  1892-5  was  barren  of  results  for 
Ireland,  being  consumed  by  factious  strife,  at  West- 
minster between  the  Houses  and  in  Ireland  between 
the  parties.  With  Gladstone's  retirement  it  seemed  as 
if  Home  Rule  were  dead.  But  thinking  men  realized 
that  the  Irish  question  was  still  there  to  be  dealt  with, 
and  approach  to  solution  began  along  new  lines.  When 
Lord  Salisbury  returned  to  power  in  1895,  Land  Purchase 
was  cautiously  extended  with  much  success  :  the  Con- 
gested Districts  Board,  originally  established  by  Mr. 
Arthur  Balfour,  was  showing  good  results,  and  his  brother 
Mr.  Gerald  Balfour,  now  Chief  Secretary,  felt  his  way 
towards  a  policy  which  came  to  be  described  as  *'  killing 
Home  Rule  with  kindness."  A  section  of  Irish  Nationalist 
opinion  was  scared  by  the  menace  contained  in  this 
epigram  ;  and  consequently,  when  in  1895  Mr.  Horace 
Plunkett  (as  he  then  was)  put  forward  proposals  for  a 
conference  of  Irishmen  to  consider  possible  means  for 
developing  Irish  agriculture  and  Irish  industries  under 
the  existing  system,  voices  Avere  raised  against  what  was 
denounced  as  a  new  attempt  to  divert  Nationalist  Ireland 
from  its  main  purpose  of  achieving  self-government. 
Mr.  Plunkett's  original  proposal  was  that  a  body  of  four 
Anti-Parnellites,  two  Parnellites  and  two  LJ^nionists  should 
meet  and  deliberate  in  Ireland,  during  the  recess.  In 
the  upshot  the  Nationalist  majority  refused  to  take 
any   part ;    but  Redmond,  with   one   of   his   supporters, 

23 


24  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

Mr.  William  Field,  served  on  the  "  Recess  Committee  " 
and  concurred  in  its  Report,  out  of  which  came  the 
creation  of  the  Department  of  Agriculture  and  Technical 
Instruction. 

In  1896  the  Commission  on  Financial  Relations,  which 
had  been  set  up  by  the  Liberal  Ministry  in  1894,  reported, 
and  its  findings  produced  a  state  of  feeling  which  for  a 
moment  promised  co-operation  between  divided  interests 
in  Ireland.  Unionist  magnates  joined  with  Nationalists 
in  denouncing  the  system  of  taxation,  which  the  Com- 
mission— by  a  majority  of  eleven  to  two — had  described 
as  oppressive  and  unjust  to  the  weaker  country. 

Redmond  was  one  of  the  members  of  this  Commission, 
which  included  also  distinguished  representatives  of  his 
Nationalist  opponents — Mr.  Blake  and  Mr.  Sexton  ;  and 
he  no  doubt  cherished  hopes  arising  from  the  resolute 
demands  for  redress  uttered  by  Lord  Castletown  and 
other  Irish  Unionist  Peers.  Those  hopes  were  soon 
dispelled  ;  nothing  but  much  controversy  came  of  the 
demand  for  improved  financial  relations.  Mr.  Gerald 
Balfour's  schemes  were  more  tangible,  and  in  1897 
Redmond  announced  that  the  Government's  proposal 
to  introduce  a  measure  of  Local  Government  for  Ireland 
should  have  his  support.  The  Bill,  when  it  came,  ex- 
ceeded expectation  in  its  scope,  and  Redmond  gave  it 
a  cordial  welcome  in  the  name  of  the  Parnellites.  The 
larger  group,  however,  then  led  by  Mr.  Dillon,  declined 
to  be  responsible  for  accepting  it. 

Later,  in  the  working  of  this  measure,  Redmond  pressed 
strongly  that  elections  under  it  should  not  be  conducted 
on  party  lines  and  that  the  landlord  class  should  be  brought 
into  local  administrative  work.  His  advice  unfortunately 
was  not  taken. 

Then  followed  the  South  African  struggle,  and  in 
giving  voice  to  a  common  sentiment  against  what 
Nationalist  Ireland  held  to  be  an  unjust  war  the  two 
Irish  parties  found  themselves  united  and  telling  together 


REDMOND  AS  CHAIBMAN  26 

in  the  lobby.  Formal  union  followed.  By  this  time  the 
cleavage  between  Parnellite  and  Anti-Parnellite  was 
less  acute  than  that  between  Mr.  Healy's  section  and 
the  followers  of  Mr.  Dillon  and  Mr.  O'Brien.  The  choice 
of  Redmond  as  Chairman  was  due  less  to  a  sense  of  his 
general  fitness  than  to  despair  of  reaching  a  decision 
between  the  claims  of  the  other  three  outstanding  men. 

The  sacrifice  to  be  made  w^as  made  at  Mr.  Dillon's 
expense,  and  he  did  not  acquiesce  willingly  or  cordially. 
The  cordiality  which  ultimately  marked  his  relations 
with  Redmond  was  of  later  growth — fostered  by  the 
necessity  which  Mr.  Dillon  found  imposed  on  him  of 
defending  loyally  the  party's  leader  against  attacks 
from  the  men  who  had  been  most  active  in  selecting  him. 

A  part  of  the  compact  under  which  Redmond  was 
elected  to  the  chair  limited  the  power  of  the  newly  chosen. 
He  was  to  be  Chairman,  not  leader  ;  that  is  to  say,  he 
was  not  to  act  except  after  consultation  with  the  party 
as  a  whole  :  he  was  not  to  commit  them  upon  policy. 
This  meant  in  practice  that  he  acted  as  head  of  a  cabinet, 
which  from  1906  onwards  consisted  of  Mr.  Dillon,  Mr. 
Devlin  and  Mr.  T.  P.  O'Connor — the  last  representing 
not  only  a  great  personal  parliamentarj^  experience  and 
ability,  but  also  the  powerful  and  zealous  organization 
of  Irish  in  Great  Britain.  Redmond  adhered  scrupu- 
lously to  the  spirit  of  this  compact.  There  w^as  only  one 
instance  in  which  he  took  action  without  consultation. 
But  that  instance  was  the  most  important  of  all — his 
speech  at  the  outbreak  of  the  war. 

Another  thing  which  governed  his  conduct  in  the  chair 
of  the  party,  as  indeed  it  governed  that  of  nearly  all 
the  rank  and  file,  was  his  horror  of  the  years  which 
Ireland  had  gone  through  since  Parnell's  fall.  He  loathed 
faction  and  he  had  struggled  through  murky  whirlpools 
of  it ;  for  the  rest  of  his  life  he  was  determined,  almost 
at  any  cost,  to  maintain  the  greatest  possible  degree 
of  unity  among  Irish  Nationalists.    Yet  in  the  end  he 


26  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

unhesitatingly  made  a  choice  and  took  an  action  which 
risked  dividing,  and  in  the  last  event  actually  divided, 
Nationalist  Ireland  as  it  had  never  been  divided  before. 
There  were  things  for  which  he  would  face  even  that 
supreme  peril.  Deep  in  his  heart  there  was  a  vision  which 
compelled  him.  It  was  the  vision  of  Ireland  united  as 
a  whole. 

All  this,  however,  lay  far  in  the  future  when  he  was 
elected  to  the  chair  ;  for  the  moment  his  task  was  to 
reunite  Irish  Nationalists,  and  it  began  prosperously. 
From  the  first  his  position  was  one  of  growing  strength. 
Irishmen  all  the  world  over  were  heartsick  of  faction 
and  rejoiced  in  even  the  name  of  unity.  Redmond  made 
it  a  reality.  While  leading  the  little  Parnellite  party, 
reduced  at  last  to  nine,  his  line  of  action  was  comparable 
to  that  pursued  by  Mr.  William  O'Brien  from  1910  on- 
wards. It  had,  to  put  things  mildlj',  not  been  calculated 
to  assist  the  leader  of  the  main  Nationalist  body.  In 
1904,  Justin  McCarthy,  then  retired  from  politics,  wrote 
in  his  book  on  British  Political  Parties  :  "  Parnell's  chief 
lieutenant  had  shown  in  the  service  of  his  chief  an  energy 
and  passion  which  few  of  us  expected  of  him,  and  was 
utterly  unsparing  in  his  denunciations  of  the  men  who 
maintained  the  other  side  of  the  controversy.  From 
this  it  was  not  unnatural  to  expect  difficulties  occasioned 
both  by  the  leader's  temper  and  by  the  temper  of  those 
whom  he  led.  But  men  who  had  been  adverse  assured 
me  that  they  had  changed  their  opinions  and  were  glad 
to  find  they  could  work  with  Redmond  in  perfect  harmony 
and  that  his  manners  and  bearing  showed  no  signs  what- 
ever of  any  bitter  memories  belonging  to  the  days  of 
internal  dispute." 

In  truth,  the  man's  nature  was  kindly  and  tolerant ; 
courtesy  came  more  natural  to  him  than  invective. 
Above  all,  he  was  sensitive  for  the  reputation  of  his 
country  in  the  eyes  of  the  world,  and  the  spectacle  of 
Irishmen  heaping  vilifications  on  each  other  always  filled 


REDMOND  AS  CHAIRMAN  27 

him  with  distaste.  Whether  the  taunts  passed  between 
Nationalist  and  Unionist  or  Nationalist  and  Nationalist 
made  little  difference  to  his  feeling.  With  him  it  was 
no  empty  phrase  that  he  regarded  all  Irishmen  in  equal 
degree  as  his  fellow-countrymen. 

In  1002  he  was  once  more  a  party  to  a  continued  effort 
made  by  Irishmen  outside  of  party  lines  to  solve  a  part 
of  the  national  difficulty.  The  policy  of  land  purchase 
had  proved  its  immense  superiority  over  that  of  dual 
ownership  and  had  even  been  introduced  on  a  consider- 
able scale.  But  its  very  success  led  to  trouble,  because 
on  one  side  of  a  boundary  fence  there  would  be  farmers 
who  had  purchased  and  whose  annual  instalments  of 
purchase  money  were  lower  than  the  rents  paid  by  their 
neighbours  on  the  other  side  of  the  mearing.  Renewed 
struggle  against  rent  led  to  new  eviction  scenes  on  the 
grand  scale  ;  and  by  this  time  landlord  opinion  was  half 
converted  to  the  purchase  policj^,  as  a  necessary  solution. 
The  persistency  of  one  young  Galway  man,  Captain 
John  Shawe  Taylor,  brought  about  the  famous  Land 
Conference  of  1902,  in  which  Mr.  O'Brien,  Mr.  Healy, 
Mr.  Redmond  and  Mr.  T.  W.  Russell  on  behalf  of  the 
tenants  met  Lord  Dunraven,  Lord  Mayo,  Colonel  Hutche- 
son  Poe  and  Colonel  Nugent  Everard  representing  (though 
not  officially)  the  landlord  interest :  and  the  result  of 
the  agreement  reached  by  this  body  was  seen  in  Mr. 
Wyndham's  Land  Purchase  Act  of  1903.  This  great 
and  drastic  measure  altered  fundamentally  the  character 
of  the  Irish  problem.  Directly  by  its  own  effect,  and 
indirectly  by  the  example  of  new  methods,  it  changed 
opinion  alike  in  Ireland  and  Great  Britain.  In  Ireland 
hitherto,  as  has  been  already  seen,  resistance  to  Home 
Rule  had  come  primarily  from  the  landlord  class,  by 
whom  the  Nationalist  desire  for  self-government  was 
construed  as  a  cloak  for  the  wish  to  revive  or  reverse  the 
ancient  confiscations.  Now,  the  land  question  was  by 
general  consent  settled,  at  least  in  principle  ;    in  propor- 


28  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

tion  as  landlords  were  bought  out  the  leading  economic 
argument  against  Home  Rule  disappeared.  The  opposi- 
tion reduced  itself  strictly  to  political  grounds  ;  and  it 
began  to  be  plain  that  the  true  heart  of  resistance  lay 
in  Ulster. 

Also,  lines  of  cleavage  in  the  Unionist  camp  began  to 
appear.  Already,  landlords  in  the  South  and  West  had 
found  a  common  ground  of  action  with  representatives 
of  the  tenants.  It  was  felt,  alike  in  Ireland  and  England, 
that  this  precedent  might  be  developed  further. 

In  England  political  opinion  was  much  affected  by 
the  apparent  success  of  an  attempt  to  deal  with  the  Irish 
problem  piecemeal.  The  Congested  Districts  Board  had 
done  much  to  relieve  those  regions  where  famine  was 
always  a  possibility  ;  Local  Government  had  given 
satisfactory  results  ;  and  now  Land  Purchase  was  hailed 
as  the  beginning  of  a  new  era.  The  idea  of  seeing  how 
much  farther  the  principle  of  tentative  approach  could 
be  carried  took  strong  hold  of  many  minds,  and  the  word 
'*  devolution  "   came  into  fashion. 

When  it  became  known  that  Sir  Antony  MacDonnell, 
then  Under-Secretary  at  Dublin  Castle,  had,  in  consulta- 
tion with  Lord  Dunraven,  drafted  a  scheme  for  trans- 
ferring parts  of  Irish  administration  to  a  purely  Irish 
authority,  a  situation  rapidly  defined  itself  in  which  Ulster 
broke  away  from  the  more  liberal  elements  in  Irish 
Unionism.  The  Ulster  group  demanded  and  obtained 
the  resignation  of  Mr.  George  W3'ndham  ;  they  demanded 
also  the  dismissal  of  the  Under-Secretary.  But  Sir  Antony 
MacDonnell  was  not  of  a  resigning  temper  ;  he  had  not 
acted  without  authority,  and  he  was  defended  zealously 
by  the  Irish  members.  The  section  of  Liberal  opinion 
which  adhered  rather  to  Lord  Rosebery  than  to  Sir  Henry 
Campbell-Bannerman  probably  drew  the  conclusion  that 
the  Irish  party  were  prepared  at  least  to  tolerate  the 
policy  of  approaching  Home  Rule  step  by  step  ;  and 
beyond  doubt  they  were  impressed  by  the  prestige  of 


REDMOND   AS  CHAIRMAN  29 

Sir  Antony  MacDonnell's  record  and  personality.  The 
son  of  a  small  Irish  Catholic  landlord,  educated  at  the 
Galway  College  of  the  Queen's  University,  he  had  entered 
the  Indian  Civil  Service  and  in  it  risen  to  the  highest 
point  of  power.  The  recommendation  that  he  should 
be  brought  home  to  assist  in  the  Government  of  Ireland 
had  come  from  Lord  Lansdowne,  then  Governor-General 
of  India,  who  knew  that  the  famous  administrator  of 
the  Punjab  was  a  Catholic  Irishman  of  Nationalist  sym- 
pathies. He  had  been  accepted  by  Mr.  Wyndham,  his 
official  chief,  "rather  as  a  colleague  than  as  a  subordinate." 
Officially  and  publicly,  the  credit  for  the  Land  Act  of 
1903  went  to  the  Chief  Secretary,  and  Mr.  Wyndham 
deserves  much  of  it.  But  no  one  who  knew  the  two 
men  could  have  doubted  that  in  the  shaping  of  a  measure 
involving  so  wide  a  range  of  detail,  the  leading  part  must 
have  been  taken  by  the  Irish  Civil  Servant  who  in  India 
had  acquired  most  of  his  fame  from  a  sweeping  measure 
of  land  reform. 

Proposals  to  alter  the  method  and  conduct  of  Irish 
administration  before  touching  the  parliamentary  power 
to  legislate  and  to  tax  came  with  extraordinary  weight 
in  coming  from  such  a  man  ;  and  the  history  of  the 
previous  Home  Rule  Bills  was  not  encouraging  to  any- 
one, especially  to  those  who  had  been  members  of  Mr. 
Gladstone's  two  last  administrations.  From  the  time 
of  the  Parnell  divorce  case  onwards,  the  Irish  question 
had  brought  to  Liberals  nothing  but  embarrassment 
and  embitterment.  The  enthusiasm  for  Home  Rule 
which  grew  steadily  from  1886  up  to  the  severance  between 
Gladstone  and  Parnell  had  vanished  in  the  squalid  con- 
troversies of  the  "  split."  Moreover,  now,  by  the  action 
of  Mr.  Chamberlain,  a  new  dividing  line  had  been  brought 
into  British  politics.  The  cry  of  Protection  seemed  in 
the  opinion  of  all  Liberals  to  menace  ruin  to  British 
prosperity  ;  the  banner  of  Free  Trade  offered  a  splendid 
rallying-point  for  a  party  which  had  known  fifteen  years 


30  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

of  dissension  and  division.  Prudent  men  thought  it 
would  be  unsafe,  unwise  and  unpatriotic  to  compromise 
this  great  national  interest  by  retaining  the  old  watch- 
word on  which  Gladstone  had  twice  fought  and  twice 
been  beaten. 

It  was  clear,  too,  that  a  Home  Rule  Bill  would  provoke 
a  direct  conflict  with  the  House  of  Lords  and  would  raise 
that  great  struggle  on  not  the  most  favourable  issue. 
Statesmen  like  Sir  Edward  Grey  and  Mr.  Asquith  pro- 
bably believed  that  a  partial  measure,  an  instalment  of 
self-government,  to  which  some  influential  sections  of 
the  Tory  party  would  not  be  unfriendly,  might  have 
strong  hopes  of  passing  into  law. 

So  it  came  to  pass  that  in  the  election  of  1906  the 
Liberal  Party  came  into  power  with  a  majority  of  un- 
exampled magnitude,  but  with  a  Government  pledged, 
negatively,  not  to  introduce  a  Home  Rule  Bill  in  that 
Parliament,  but,  positively,  to  attempt  an  Irish  settle- 
ment by  the  policy  of  instalments. 

In  all  this  lay  the  seeds  of  trouble  for  the  Irish  leader. 
Liberals  have  never  understood  that  Ireland  will  not  take 
from  them  what  it  would  take  from  the  Tories.  It  will 
accept,  as  a  palliative,  from  the  party  opposed  to  Home 
Rule  what  it  will  not  accept  from  those  who  have 
admitted  the  justice  of  the  national  demand. 


II 

"  For  myself,"  said  Redmond  in  his  speech  to  the 
Irish  Convention  in  May  1907,  "  I  have  always  expressed 
in  public  and  in  private  my  opinion  that  no  half-way 
house  on  this  question  is  possible  ;  but  at  the  same  time 
I  am,  or  at  any  rate  I  try  to  be,  a  practical  politician. 
In  the  lodgment  this  idea  of  instalments  had  got  in  the 
minds  of  English  statesmen  I  recognized  the  fact — 
and  after  all  in  politics  the  first  essential  is  to  recognize 


REDMOND   AS  CHAIRMAN  31 

facts — I  recognized  the  fact  that  in  this  Parliament  we 
were  not  going  to  get  a  pure  Home  Rule  Bill  offered, 
and  I  consented,  and  I  was  absolutely  right  in  consenting, 
that  whatever  scheme  short  of  that  was  put  forward 
would  be  considered  calmly  on  its  merits." 

This  meant  that  during  the  whole  of  the  year  1906 
and  a  part  of  1907  the  proposal  of  the  new  Irish  Bill 
was  under  discussion  with  the  Irish  leaders.  The  course 
of  these  deliberations  was  undoubtedly  a  disappointment. 
Mr.  Bryce  was  replaced  by  Mr.  Birrell  as  Chief  Secretary, 
but  the  scheme  still  fell  short  of  what  Redmond  had 
hoped  to  attain.  Unfortunately,  and  it  was  a  character- 
istic error,  his  sanguine  temperament  had  led  him  to 
encourage  in  Ireland  hopes  as  high  as  his  own.  The 
production  of  the  Irish  Council  Bill  and  its  reception  in 
Ireland  was  the  first  real  shock  to  his  power. 

Mr.  Birrell  in  introducing  the  measure  spoke  with  his 
eye  on  the  Tories  and  the  House  of  Lords.  He  repre- 
sented it  as  only  the  most  trifling  concession  ;  he  empha- 
sized not  the  powers  which  it  conveyed  but  the  limitations 
to  them.  Redmond  in  following  him  was  in  a  difficult 
position.  He  stressed  the  point  that  to  accept  a  scheme 
which  by  reason  of  its  partial  nature  would  break  down 
in  its  working  would  be  ruinous,  because  failure  would 
be  attributed  to  natural  incapacity  in  the  Irish  people. 
Acceptance,  therefore,  he  said,  could  not  be  uncondi- 
tional ;  and  undoubtedly  to  his  mind  it  was  conditioned 
by  his  hope  of  securing  certain  important  amendments, 
which  he  outlined.  None  the  less,  the  tone  of  his  speech 
was  one  of  acceptance,  and  he  concluded  : 

"  I  have  never  in  all  the  long  years  that  I  have  been 
in  this  House  spoken  under  such  a  heavy  sense  of  respon- 
sibility as  I  am  speaking  on  this  measure  this  afternoon. 
Ever  since  Mr.  Gladstone's  Bill  of  1886  Ireland  has  been 
waiting  for  some  scheme  to  settle  the  problem — waiting 
sometimes  in  hope,  sometimes  almost  in  despair  ;  but 
the  horrible  thing  is  this,  that  all  the  time  that  Ireland 


32  JOHN   REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

has  been  so  waiting  there  has  been  a  gaping  wound  in 
her  side,  and  her  sons  have  had  to  stand  by  helpless  while 
the}'^  saw  her  very  life-blood  flowing  out.  Who  can  say 
that  is  an  exaggeration  ?  Twenty  years  of  resolute 
government  by  the  party  above  the  gangway  have  dimin- 
ished the  population  of  Ireland  by  a  million.  No  man 
in  any  position  of  influence  can  take  upon  himself  the 
awful  responsibility  of  despising  and  putting  upon  one 
side  any  device  that  may  arrest  that  hemorrhage,  even 
although  he  believed,  as  I  do,  that  far  different  remedies 
must  be  applied  before  Ireland  can  stand  upon  her  feet 
in  vigorous  strength.  We  are  determined,  as  far  as  we 
are  concerned,  that  these  other  remedies  shall  be 
applied  ;  but  in  the  meantime  we  should  shrink  from 
the  responsibility  of  rejecting  anything  which,  after 
that  full  consideration  which  the  Bill  will  receive, 
seems  to  our  deliberate  judgment  calculated  to  relieve 
the  sufferings  of  Ireland  and  hasten  the  day  of  her  full 
national  convalescence." 

There  is  no  doubt  that  the  element  in  him  which  urged 
him  to  welcome  anything  that  could  set  Irishmen  work- 
ing together  on  Irish  problems  made  it  almost  impossible 
for  him  to  throw  aside  this  chance.  It  was  clear  to  me 
also  that  by  long  months  of  work  in  secret  deliberation 
the  proposals  originally  set  out  had  been  greatly  altered, 
so  much  so  that  in  surveying  the  Bill  he  was  conscious 
mainly  of  the  improvements  in  it  ;  and  that  in  this 
process  his  mind  had  lost  perception  of  how  the  measure 
was  likely  to  affect  Irish  opinion — especially  in  view 
of  his  own  hopeful  prognostications.  At  all  events,  the 
reception  of  Mr.  Birrell's  speech,  even  by  Redmond's 
own  colleagues,  marked  a  sudden  change  in  the  atmo- 
sphere. Some  desired  to  vote  at  once  against  the 
measure  ;  many  were  with  difficulty  brought  into  the 
lobby  to  support  even  the  formal  stage  of  first  reading. 
In  Ireland  there  was  fierce  denunciation.  A  Convention 
was  called  for  May  21st.  The  crowd  was  so  great  that 
many  of  us  could  not  make  our  way  into  the  Mansion 
House  ;  and  Redmond  opened  the  proceedings  by  moving 


REDMOND  AS  CHAIRMAN  33 

the  rejection  of  the  Bill.  In  the  interval  since  the  debate 
he  had  been  confronted  with  a  definite  refusal  to  concede 
the  amendments  for  which  he  asked. 

These  were  mainly  two,  of  principle  :  for  the  objection 
taken  to  the  finance  of  the  Bill  was  a  detail,  though 
of  the  first  importance.  The  Bill  proposed  to  hand 
over  the  five  great  departments  of  Irish  administration 
to  the  control  of  an  Irish  Council.  The  decisions  of  that 
Council  were  to  be  subject  to  the  veto  of  the  Lord-Lieu- 
tenant, as  are  the  decisions  of  Parliament  to  the  veto  of 
the  Crown.  But  the  Bill  proposed  not  merely  to  give  to 
the  Viceroy  the  power  of  vetoing  proposed  action  but 
of  instituting  other  action  on  his  own  initiative.  Secondly, 
the  Council  was  to  exercise  its  control  through  Com- 
mittees, each  of  which  was  to  have  a  paid  chairman, 
nominated  by  the  Crown. 

"  It  would  be  far  better,"  Redmond  had  said  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  "  to  have  one  man  selected  as  the 
chairmen  of  these  committees  are  to  be  selected,  to  have 
charge,  so  far  as  the  Council  is  concerned,  of  the  working 
of  the  Department,  and  then  all  these  chairmen  acting 
together  could  form  a  sort  of  organic  body  which  would 
give  cohesion,  would  co-ordinate  and  give  stability  to 
the  whole  of  the  work.  I  am  afraid  that  the  Government 
seem  to  have  shrunk  from  that  for  fear  the  argument 
would  be  used  against  them  that  they  were  really  creating 
a  Ministry." 

That  was  the  real  difficulty.  A  Council  subject  only 
to  a  veto  on  its  acts,  even  though  it  could  neither  pass 
a  by-law  nor  strike  a  rate,  would  undoubtedly  be  said 
by  the  Unionist  opposition  to  be  a  rudimentary  parlia- 
ment. A  group  of  chairmen  possessing  administrative 
powers  like  those  of  Ministers  would  be  labelled  a 
Ministry  ;  and  the  Liberals  who  had  pledged  themselves 
not  to  give  effect  to  their  Home  Rule  principles  were 
sensitive  to  charges  of  breach  of  faith. 

It  is  a  curious  fact  in  politics  that  the  public  promise 

4 


34  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

conveyed  in  the  adoption  of  certain  principles  is  generally 
taken  to  be  on  the  level  of  ordinary  commercial  obliga- 
tion. Failure  to  keep  it  jeopardizes  a  man's  reputation 
for  political  stability,  just  as  failure  to  pay  a  tailor's 
bill  imperils  a  man's  financial  character.  But  a  promise 
to  political  opponents  that  you  will  not  give  effect  to 
your  principles  stands  on  the  level  of  a  card  debt  :  it 
is  a  matter  of  honour  to  make  good  ;  and  on  this  point 
Mr.  Asquith  in  particular  has  always  shown  an  adamantine 
resolution. 

From  1907  onwards  it  was  with  Mr.  Asquith  that 
Redmond  had  chiefly  to  count.  Sir  Henry  Campbell- 
Bannerman,  who,  personally,  had  given  no  such  limiting 
pledges,  and  who  during  his  two  years  of  leadership 
commanded  a  respect,  an  affectionate  allegiance,  from 
his  followers  in  the  House  without  parallel  at  all  events 
since  Mr.  Gladstone's  day,  was  fast  weakening  in  health. 
He  lived  long  enough  to  give  freedom  to  South  Africa, 
the  one  outstanding  achievement  of  that  Parliament  ; 
and  by  the  success  of  that  great  measure  he  did  more 
to  remove  British  distrust  of  Home  Rule  than  even 
Gladstone  ever  accomplished.  It  was  no  fault  of  his  if 
Liberalism  failed  to  settle  the  Irish  question  at  the  moment 
when  Liberal  power  reached  its  highest  point. 

The  failure  of  the  Council  Bill  had  one  good  result, 
and  one  only.  It  cleared  the  way  for  a  definite  propa- 
ganda on  Home  Rule.  But  before  this  could  be  under- 
taken it  was  necessary  to  pull  Nationalist  Ireland  to- 
gether, for  it  was  once  more  rent  with  division  and  distrust. 
Mr.  Healy,  who  in  1901  had  been  expelled  from  the  Irish 
party  and  its  organization  on  the  motion  of  Mr.  O'Brien 
and  against  Redmond's  advice,  and  Mr.  O'Brien,  who 
had  subsequently  retired  from  the  party  against  Red- 
mond's wish,  were  both  of  them  formidable  antagonists  ; 
and  each  was  vehement  in  attack  on  the  main  body  of 
Nationalists  and  their  leader.  It  was  some  time  before 
Redmond  braced  himself  to  the  struggle  ;    but  from  the 


REDMOND  AS  CHAIRMAN  35 

opening  of  the  autumn  recess  in  1907  he  undertook  a 
campaign  throughout  Ireland  which  it  would  be  difficult 
to  overpraise.  In  a  series  of  speeches  at  chosen  centres, 
delivered  before  great  audiences,  he  laid  down  once  more 
the  national  demand  as  he  conceived  it ;  and  in  each 
speech  he  dealt  with  a  different  aspect  of  the  case  for 
Home  Rule. 

A  formal  outcome  of  this  campaign  was  the  re-estab- 
lishment of  national  unity.  Mr.  O'Brien  and  Mr.  Healy 
returned  to  the  Irish  party  for  a  brief  period.  But  the 
more  important  result  was  the  re-establishment  of 
Redmond's  personal  position.  He  had  made  an  effort 
which  would  have  been  great  for  any  man,  but  for  him 
was  a  victory  over  his  own  temperament.  That  tempera- 
ment had  in  it,  negatively,  a  great  lack  of  personal 
ambition  and,  positively,  a  strong  love  for  a  quiet  life. 
He  did  his  work  in  Parliament  regularly  and  conscien- 
tiously, always  there  day  in  and  day  out ;  and  it  was 
work  of  a  very  exacting  kind.  This  had  become  the 
routine  of  his  existence  and  he  did  it  without  strain. 
But  to  go  outside  it  was  for  him  always  an  effort.  He 
hated  town  life  ;  but  more  than  this,  he  hated  ceremonies, 
presentations,  receptions  in  hotels,  and  all  the  promis- 
cuous contact  of  political  gatherings.  Nevertheless,  when 
he  came  to  such  an  occasion  no  living  man  acquitted 
himself  better.  Apart  from  his  oratory,  he  had  an  admir- 
able manner,  a  dignified  yet  friendly  courtesy  which 
gained  attachment.  In  the  course  of  the  autumn  and 
winter  following  the  Irish  Council  Bill  he  must  have  met 
and  been  seen  by  a  hundred  times  more  of  his  adherents 
than  in  any  similar  period  of  his  leadership.  People  all 
over  Ireland  heard  him  not  only  on  the  public  platform 
but  in  small  addresses  to  deputations,  in  impromptu 
speeches  at  semi-public  dinners,  and  all  of  this  strength- 
ened him  where  an  Irish  leader  most  needs  to  be 
strengthened — in  the  hearts  of  the  people.  The  hold 
which  he  gained  then  stood  to  him  during  the  years  which 


36  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

followed  and  up  to  the  outbreak  of  the  war.  But  it 
could  have  been  still  further  strengthened,  and  if  am- 
bition had  been  a  motive  force  in  him,  he  would  have 
strengthened  it.  More  than  that,  if  he  had  realized  his 
full  value  to  Ireland,  he  would  have  felt  it  his  duty  to 
do  so.  Modesty,  combined  with  a  certain  degree  of 
indolence,  made  him  leave  all  that  contact  with  the  mass 
of  his  followers  which  is  necessary  to  leadership  to  be 
effected  through  his  chief  colleagues,  Mr.  Dillon  and 
Mr.  Devlin — who,  through  no  will  of  theirs,  became 
rather  joint  leaders  than  lieutenants,  so  far  as  Ireland 
was  concerned. 

Circumstances  helped  to  emphasize  this  tendency. 
His  work  lay  very  greatly  in  London.  Parliament 
occupied  every  year  a  longer  and  longer  space.  The 
task  of  platform  advocacy  all  over  England  was  urgent, 
and  in  England  Redmond  stood  out  alone.  It  was  little 
to  be  wondered  at  that  when  each  long  deferred  recess 
came  he  made  it  a  vacation  and  not  a  change  of  work. 
The  seclusion  from  direct  intercourse  with  the  mass  of 
his  followers  which  conditions  imposed  upon  him  was 
further  accentuated  by  his  personal  tastes  and  his  choice 
of  a  dwelling. 

In  the  early  years  of  the  nineteenth  century  the 
mountain  range  which  runs  along  the  east  coast  from 
outside  Dublin  through  Wicklow  into  county  Wexford 
was  a  country  difficult  of  access  and  unsubdued.  Here 
in  1803  Emmet  found  a  refuge,  and  after  Emmet's  death 
here  Michael  Dwyer  still  held  out  :  Connemara  itself 
was  hardly  wilder  or  less  accessible,  till  the  "  military 
road  "  was  run,  little  more  than  a  hundred  years  ago, 
from  Dublin  over  the  western  slopes  of  Featherbed,  past 
Glencree,  and  through  Callary  Bog,  skirting  Glendalough 
and  traversing  the  wild  recesses  of  Glenmalure,  so  that 
it  cuts  across  the  headwaters  of  those  beautiful  streams 
which  meet  in  the  Vale  of  Ovoca.  From  Glenmalure 
the  road  climbs  a  steep  ridge  and  then  travels  in  wide 


REDMOND  AS  CHAIRMAN  37 

downward  curves  across  the  seaward  side  of  Lugnaquilla 
— fifth  in  height  among  Irish  mountains.  Here,  at  the 
head  of  a  long  valley  which  runs  down  to  the  Meeting 
of  the  Waters,  was  built  one  of  the  barracks  which 
billeted  the  original  garrison  of  the  road.  Later,  these 
buildings  had  been  used  for  constabulary ;  but  with 
peaceful  times  this  grew  needless,  for  there  was  little 
disturbance  among  these  Wicklow  folk,  tenants  of  little 
farms,  each  with  a  sheep-run  on  the  vast  hills.  Nothing 
could  be  less  like  the  flat  sea-bordering  lands  of  the 
Barony  of  Forth  in  which  the  Redmonds  spent  their 
boyhood  than  these  wild,  sweeping,  torrent-seamed  folds 
of  hill  and  valley  ;  but  the  place  came  to  him  as  part  of 
his  inheritance  from  "  the  Chief."  Parnell's  home  at 
Avondale  was  some  ten  miles  from  here,  lying  in  woods 
beside  the  Ovoca  River ;  but  the  Parnell  property 
stretched  up  to  the  slopes  of  Lugnaquilla,  and  the 
dismantled  barrack  was  used  by  him  as  a  shooting 
lodge.  Here,  in  the  early  days  before  his  life  became 
absorbed  in  the  masterful  attachment  which  led  finally 
to  his  overthrow,  he  spent  good  hours  ;  and  here  the 
two  Redmonds  and  those  others  of  his  followers  who 
were  his  companions  came  to  camp  roughly  in  this 
strange,  gaunt  survival  of  military  rule.  After  Parnell's 
death  Redmond  bought  the  barrack  and  a  small  plot 
of  land  about  it,  and  it  became  increasingly  and  ex- 
clusively his  home  in  Ireland.  It  was,  indeed,  Ireland 
itself  for  him.  In  it  and  through  it  he  knew  Ireland 
intimately,  felt  Ireland  intensely  and  intensively,  not 
only  as  a  place,  but  as  a  way  of  being.  Ireland  to  him 
meant  Aughavanagh. 

Partlj^  no  doubt,  the  almost  unbroken  wildness  of 
his  surroundings  appealed  to  an  element  of  romance  in 
his  character,  which  was  strongly  emotional  though 
extremely  reticent.  Only  an  artist  would  have  recog- 
nized beauty  in  those  scenes,  for  in  all  Ireland  it  would 
be  difficult  to  find  a  landscape  with  less  amenity ;    the 


38  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

hill  shapes  are  featureless,  without  boldness  or  intricacy 
of  line.  Redmond,  a  born  artist  in  words,  possessing 
strongly  the  sense  of  form,  was  sensitive  to  beauty  in 
all  kinds — 3^et  rather  to  the  beauty  that  is  symmetrical, 
graceful  and  well-planned.  A  sailor  does  not  love  the 
sea  for  its  beauty,  and  Redmond  loved  Ireland  as  a 
sailor  loves  the  sea — yet  with  a  difference.  Ireland  to  him 
in  a  great  measure  was  Aughavanagh,  and  Aughavanagh 
was  a  place  of  rest.  Ireland  is  a  good  country  to  rest 
in.  But  it  would  have  been  far  better  for  Redmond 
and  for  Ireland  if  Ireland  had  been  the  place  not  of  his 
rest,  but  of  his  work. 

His  work  was  essentially  that  of  an  agent  of  Ireland 
carrying  on  Ireland's  affairs  in  a  strange  capital.  He 
spent  more  of  his  time  in  London  than  in  Ireland,  but 
he  was  never  part  of  the  life  of  London,  never  in  any 
sense  a  Londoner.  He  was  part  of  the  life  of  the  House 
of  Commons,  for  that  was  his  place  of  work  ;  and  when 
he  left  it  he  went  to  Aughavanagh  as  a  man  returns  from 
the  City  to  his  home.  This  home  of  his  was  in  no  sense 
connected  with  his  active  occupations.  He  was  no  lover 
of  gardening  or  of  farming  ;  he  had  none  of  the  Irish- 
man's taste  for  the  overseeing  of  stock  or  land  ;  he 
enjoyed  shooting,  but  he  was  not  a  passionate  sports- 
man. What  was  a  passion  with  him — for  he  sacrificed 
much  to  it — was  rest  in  the  place  of  his  choice. 

It  was  not  a  lonely  habitation.  He  was  no  recluse, 
and  when  there  he  was  always  surrounded  by  his  friends. 
I  do  not  know  precisely  how  one  could  constitute  a  list 
of  them — but  half  a  dozen  men  at  least  came  and  went 
there  as  they  chose.  Mr.  Mooney,  Mr.  Hay  den,  "  Long 
John "  O'Connor,  Dr.  Kenny — these,  and  above  all, 
Paddy  O'Brien,  the  party's  chief  acting  whip — were 
constant  there.  Some  came  to  shoot,  and  Willie  Redmond 
used  to  come  over  from  his  house  at  Delgany,  where  the 
Glen  of  the  Downs  debouches  seaward  ;  walking  generally, 
for  he  was  the  fastest  and  most  untiring  of  mountaineers  : 


REDMOND   AS   CHAIRMAN  39 

very  few  cared  to  keep  beside  him  on  the  hills.  Others 
were  content  to  share  the  daily  bathes,  morning  and 
afternoon,  in  a  long  deep  pool  where  the  little  stream 
tumbling  down  a  series  of  cascades  makes  a  place  to 
dive  and  swim  in.  These  were  the  friends  of  Redmond's 
own  generation,  and  they  were  also  his  son's  friends  ; 
but  the  two  daughters  had  their  allies,  and  one  way  or 
another  the  party  was  apt  to  be  a  big  one — very  simply 
provided  for.  When  I  went  there  first  (in  1907)  you 
climbed  a  narrow  stone  stair  to  the  first  floor  ;  on  the 
left  was  a  dining-room,  beyond  that  a  billiard-room  ; 
on  the  right,  Redmond's  study,  and  beyond  that  his 
bedroom.  Another  flight  took  you  to  the  upper  regions, 
where  were  two  dormitories — the  girls  to  the  right,  the 
men  to  the  left.  Later,  he  made  some  alterations,  and 
the  upstair  rooms  were  subdivided  off  ;  the  garden  was 
developed  ;  it  became  more  of  a  house  and  less  of  a 
barrack  ;  but  the  character  of  the  life  did  not  change. 
It  was  most  simple,  most  hospitable,  most  unconventional 
and  most  remote. 

Certainly  a  great  part  of  Aughavanagh's  charm  for 
him  lay  in  its  remoteness.  It  was  seven  Irish  miles 
up  a  hilly  road  from  the  nearest  railway  station,  post 
office  or  telegraph  station.  Aughrim  was  three  hours' 
train  journey  from  Dublin,  on  a  tiny  branch  line,  and 
trains  were  few.  Until  motors  brought  him  (to  his 
intense  resentment)  within  reach,  he  was  as  inaccessible 
as  if  he  had  lived  in  Clare  or  Mayo. 

So  it  came  to  pass  that  though  he  knew  to  the  very 
core  one  typical  district  of  Ireland,  and  was  far  more 
closely  in  touch  with  a  few  score  of  Irish  peasants  through 
their  daily  life  than  any  of  his  leading  associates,  he  was 
yet  cut  off  by  his  own  choice  from  much  that  is  Ireland 
— and  perhaps  from  much  that  was  most  important  to 
him.  Political  opinion  is  created  in  the  towns,  and  he 
knew  the  Irish  townsfolk,  so  far  as  he  could  manage  it, 
only    through    his    correspondence,    and    through    those 


40  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

business  visits   to    Dublin   which   he   made    aa    few    as 
possible. 

If  his  work  had  lain,  where  it  should  by  rights  have 
lain,  in  a  ministerial  office  in  Dublin,  all  would  have 
been  well.  As  it  was,  the  deliberate  and  extreme  seclusion 
of  his  life  in  Ireland  weakened  his  influence.  He  was 
far  too  shrewd  not  to  know  this,  and  far  too  unambitious 
to  care.  Work  he  never  shrank  from.  But  the  daily 
solicitations  of  people  with  personal  grievances  to  lay 
before  him,  personal  interests  which  they  desired  him 
to  promote,  made  a  form  of  trouble  which  in  his  periods 
of  rest  from  work  he  refused  to  undergo. 

The  same  qualities  in  him  were  responsible  for  his 
persistent  refusal  to  accept  private  hospitality  where  he 
went  on  public  business.  Whether  in  Ireland  or  in 
Great  Britain,  he  must  stay  at  a  hotel,  and  many  were 
the  magnates  of  Liberalism  whose  ruffled  feelings  it  was 
necessary  to  smooth  down  on  this  account.  He  detested 
being  lionized  and  wanted  always,  when  the  public  affair 
was  over,  to  get  away  to  his  own  quarters. 

The  demands  on  him  in  England  for  platform  work 
were  portentous.  Every  constituency  which  wanted  a 
meeting  on  the  Home  Rule  question  wanted  Redmond 
and  no  other  speaker.  Of  course  he  could  not  go  to 
one-twentieth  of  the  places  where  he  was  asked  for ; 
and  his  objection  to  going  was  not  the  effort  involved 
but  the  impossibility  either  of  indefinitely  repeating  him- 
self or  of  finding  something  new  to  say  each  time.  "  If 
it  was  in  America,"  he  would  say,  "  I  would  speak  as 
often  as  you  asked  me  "  (it  was  my  misfortune  to  have 
to  do  the  asking),  "  because  they  never  rejDort  a  speech." 
The  fact  is  worth  noting,  for  in  scores  of  instances  what 
was  adduced  by  opponents  as  quotation  from  his  utter- 
ances in  the  United  States  represented  simply  some 
American  journalist's  impression,  perhaps  less  of  what 
Redmond  said  than  of  what,  in  the  reporter's  opinion, 
he   should    have    said.     Those    who   represented  him   as 


REDMOND  AS  CHAIRMAN  41 

putting  one  face  on  the  argument  in  America  and  another 
in  Great  Britain  did  not  know  the  man.  *'  I  have  made 
it  a  rule,"  he  said  to  me  more  than  once,  "  to  say 
the  extremest  things  I  had  to  say  in  the  House  of 
Commons." 

However,  all  the  machinery  which  was  employed  by 
the  opponents  of  Home  Rule  to  prejudice  Ireland's  case 
in  the  British  constituencies  proved  very  inefifectual. 
For  one  thing,  the  lesson  of  South  Africa  had  gone  home. 
For  another,  and  perhaps  a  greater,  no  cause  ever  had 
a  missionary  better  adapted  to  the  temperament  of  the 
British  democracy.  The  dignity  and  beauty  of  Redmond's 
eloquence,  the  weight  which  he  could  give  to  an  argu- 
ment, his  extraordinary  gift  for  simplifying  an  issue  and 
grouping  thoughts  in  large  bold  masses — all  these  things 
carried  audiences  with  them. 


Ill 

Between  1908  and  1910  we  were  still,  though  witli 
rapidly  increasing  success,  trying  to  get  a  hearing  for 
the  Irish  question — trying  to  push  it  once  more  to  the 
front.  The  change  of  leadership  from  Sir  Henry  Campbell- 
Bannerman  to  Mr.  Asquith  had  damped  Liberal  enthusi- 
asm. We  got  solid  work  done  for  Ireland  in  the  University 
Act  of  1908,  though  Redmond  would  have  preferred  a 
university  of  the  residential  type,  like  that  in  which  he 
had  himself  been  an  undergraduate.  A  highly  conten- 
tious measure  was  also  carried  in  the  Land  Act  of  1909. 
But  a  new  power  was  coming  to  the  front,  at  once  assist- 
ing and  thwarting  our  efforts.  Mr.  Lloyd  George  put 
a  new  fighting  spirit  into  Liberalism  :  but  the  objects 
which  he  had  at  heart  could  only  be  achieved  by  a  great 
expenditure  of  electoral  power,  and  among  those  objects 
Irish    self-government    found    only    a    secondary    place. 


42  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

When  Mr.  Gladstone  spoke  of  liberty  he  thought  of  what 
he  had  helped  to  bring  to  Greece,  Italy,  Bulgaria  and 
Montenegro — what  he  had  tried  to  bring  to  Ireland. 
When  Mr.  Lloyd  George  spoke  of  liberty,  he  thought 
of  what  he  wanted  to  bring  to  England  first,  and  to 
Ireland  by  the  way  ;  his  conviction  that  Ireland  needed 
self-government  was  not  so  deeply  rooted  as  his  con- 
viction that  the  poor  throughout  the  United  Kingdom 
needed  help. 

Old  Age  Pensions  had  been  popular,  but  had  not  been 
a  fighting  issue.  Mr.  Lloyd  George  provided  the  fighting 
issue  with  a  vengeance  when  he  set  himself  to  pay  for 
them.  Unfortunately,  Nationalist  Ireland  had  no  enthu- 
siasm for  the  Budget  which  English  Radicalism  made 
its  flag.  A  country  of  peasant  proprietors  was  easily 
scared  by  the  very  name  of  land  taxes.  But  above 
all  the  Finance  Bill  dealt  drastically,  and  many  thought 
unfairly,  with  the  powerful  liquor  trade,  which  in  its 
branches  of  brewing  and  distilling  included  the  main 
manufacturing  interest  of  southern  Ireland,  and  on  its 
retail  side  was  incredibly  diffused  through  the  whole 
shopkeeping  community. 

The  dissident  Nationalists  saw  their  chance.  Mr. 
O'Brien  emerged  from  one  of  his  periodic  retirements  to 
lead  a  whirlwind  campaign  against  the  "  robber  Budget." 
Redmond  and  our  party  were  obliged  to  oppose  a 
measure  which  pressed  so  hard  as  this  undoubtedly  did 
on  Ireland.  Our  opposition  to  the  land  taxes  was  with- 
drawn when  valuable  concessions  had  been  made,  but 
no  such  compromise  was  considered  possible  on  the 
liquor  taxes.  On  the  other  hand,  it  grew  clear  that 
the  measure  was  likely  to  produce  a  conflict  in  which 
the  power  of  the  House  of  Lords  might  be  challenged 
on  the  most  favourable  ground  :  and  for  that  reason, 
when  the  third  reading  was  reached,  the  Irish  party 
abstained  from  voting  against  it.  This  course,  while 
it   facilitated  close    co-operation   with    Liberalism  in  the 


REDMOND   AS  CHAIRMAN  43 

general  election  which  followed,  weakened  us  in  Ireland  ; 
and  eleven  out  of  the  eighty-three  Nationalist  members 
returned  in  January  1910  ranked  themselves  as  outside 
the  party  ;  though  Mr.  O'Brien's  actual  following  was 
limited  to  seven  Cork  members  and  Mr.  Healy. 


IV 

The   action   of  the   Lords   in   rejecting   the   Budget  of 

1909  had  an  important  personal  result.  It  placed  Mr. 
Asquith  in  a  role  which  no  one  was  ever  better  qualified 
to  fill — that  of  a  Liberal  statesman  defending  principles 
of  democratic  control  menaced  after  a  long  period  of 
security.  The  Prime  Minister,  not  the  Chancellor  of 
the  Exchequer,  now  became  the  protagonist ;  and  this 
was  to  Redmond's  liking,  for  he  felt  that  Mr.  Asquith 
was  more  concerned  with  the  problems  which  had 
occupied  Gladstone's  closing  years  and  Mr.  Lloyd  George 
with  those  of  a  later  day. 

Yet  in  the  first  grave  encounter  after  the  rejection 
of  the  Budget,  Redmond  and  the  leader  of  the  Liberal 
party  came  to  sharp  differences.  The  general  election 
had  amply  justified  the  advice  which  was  urged  by  him 
on  Sir  Henry  Campbell-Bannerman  when  the  House  of 
Lords  rejected  the  Education  Bill  in  1906 — namely,  that 
the  Liberal  party  should  take  up  at  once  the  inevitable 
fight  before  their  enormous  strength  had  been  frittered 
away  in  a  series  of  disappointments.  The  majority  of 
1906  was  too  swollen  to  be  healthy  :  owing  to  the  ruling 
out  of  Home  Rule,  it  included  a  number  of  men  only 
partial  adherents  of  the  full  Liberal  programme  ;  and 
a  diminution  of  its  proportions  owing  to  the  traditional 
swing   of   the   pendulum   was   certain.     But   in   January 

1910  the  losses  were  more  than  even  sanguine  Tory 
prophets  predicted.     Tories  came  back  equal  in  strength 


44  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

to  the  Liberals  :    Labour  was  only  forty,   so  that  the 
Irish  party  held  the  balance  in  the  House. 

The  election  had  been  fought  expressly  on  the  issue  of 
Government's  claim  to  enable  a  Liberal  Government  to 
deal  with  certain  problems,  among  which  the  Irish 
question  occupied  the  foremost  place.  It  was  easy  now 
for  the  Tories  to  argue  that  the  Government  appealing 
to  the  country  on  that  issue  had  lost  two  hundred 
seats.  They  said :  "  You  have  authority  to  pass  your 
Budget — but  for  these  vast  unconstitutional  changes 
you  have  no  mandate."  The  temper  of  their  party, 
which  had  more  than  doubled  its  numbers,  was  very 
high :  in  the  Liberal  ranks  depression  reigned  and 
counsels    were    divided. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  election  Mr.  Asquith  had  made 
a  great  speech  in  the  Albert  Hall  in  which  he  outlined 
the  Liberal  policy.  In  it  he  declared  that  the  pledge 
against  introducing  a  Home  Rule  Bill  was  withdrawn, 
and  that  the  establishment  of  self-government  for  Ireland, 
subject  to  the  supremacy  of  the  Imperial  Parliament, 
was  among  the  Government's  main  purposes.  But  the 
House  of  Lords  was  in  the  way. 

"  We  shall  not  assume  office  and  we  shall  not  hold 
office  unless  we  can  secure  the  safeguards  which  experi- 
ence shows  us  to  be  necessary  for  the  legislative  utility 
and  honour  of  the  party  of  progress." 

This  was  universally  taken  to  mean  that  he  would 
obtain  a  guarantee  that  the  King  would,  if  necessary, 
consent  to  the  creation  of  sufficient  new  peers  to  over- 
ride the  hostile  majority.  But  as  the  election  progressed, 
uncertainties  developed  and  an  alternative  policy  of 
attempting  to  reform  the  Upper  House  was  advocated 
in  certain  quarters.  The  question  arose  also  as  to  whether 
the  first  business  of  the  new  House  should  be  to  pass  the 
Budget  which  the  Lords  had  thrown  out  or  to  proceed 
with  the  attack  on  the  power  of  veto. 

Redmond's   view   on   this   was   not   in  doubt.      At    a 


REDMOND   AS  CHAIRMAN  45 

meeting  in  Dublin  on  February  10,  1910,  he  declared  in 
the  most  emphatic  manner  that  to  deal  with  the  Budget 
first  would  be  a  breach  of  Mr.  Asquith's  pledge  to  the 
country,  since  it  would  throw  away  the  power  of  the 
House  of  Commons  to  stop  supply.  This  speech  attracted 
much  attention,  and  the  memory  of  it  was  present  to 
many  a  fortnight  later  when  Mr.  Asquith  was  replying 
to  Mr.  Balfour  at  the  opening  of  the  debate  on  the 
Address.  The  Prime  Minister  dwelt  strongly  on  the 
administrative  necessity  for  regularizing  the  financial 
position  disturbed  by  the  Upper  House's  unconstitutional 
action.  He  indicated  also  the  need  for  reform  in  the 
composition  of  that  House.  But,  above  all,  he  disclaimed 
as  improper  and  impossible  any  attempt  to  secure  in 
advance  a  pledge  for  the  contingent  exercise  of  the  Royal 
prerogative. 

"  I  have  received  no  such  guarantee  and  I  have  asked 
for  no  such  guarantee,"  he  said. 

The  change  was  marked  indeed  from  the  moment 
when  he  uttered  in  the  Albert  Hall  his  sentence  against 
assuming  office  or  holding  office  without  the  necessary 
safeguards — an  assurance  at  which  the  whole  vast  assembly 
rose  to  their  feet  and  cheered.  Every  word  in  his  speech 
on  the  Address  added  to  the  depression  of  his  followers 
and  the  elation  of  the  Opposition.  Redmond  followed 
him  at  once.  In  such  circumstances  as  then  existed, 
it  was  exceedingly  undesirable  for  the  Irish  leader  to 
emphasize  the  fact  that  his  vote  could  overthrow  the 
Government :  and  the  least  unnecessary  display  of  this 
power  would  naturally  and  properly  have  been  resented 
by  the  Government's  following.  No  one  knew  this 
better  than  Redmond,  yet  the  position  demanded  bold 
action.  His  speech,  courteous,  as  always,  in  tone,  and 
studiously  respectful  in  its  reference  to  the  position  of 
the  Crown,  was  an  open  menace  to  the  Government.  He 
quoted  the  Prime  Minister's  words  at  the  Albert  Hall, 
he  appealed  to  the  House  at  large  for  the  construction 


46  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

which  had  been  everywhere  put  on  them  ;  and  it  was 
apparent  that  he  had  the  full  sympathy  not  only  of  his 
own  party  and  of  Labour,  but  of  most  of  Mr.  Asquith's 
own  following.     He  concluded  in  these  words  : 

**  If  the  Prime  Minister  is  not  in  a  position  to  say  that 
he  has  such  guarantees  as  are  necessary  to  enable  him 
to  pass  a  Veto  Bill  this  year,  and  if  in  spite  of  that  he 
intends  to  remain  in  office  and  proposes  to  pass  the 
Budget  into  law  and  then  to  adjourn — I  do  not  care  for 
how  short  or  how  long — the  consideration  of  the  Bill 
dealing  with  the  veto  of  the  House  of  Lords,  that  is  a 
policy  which  Ireland  cannot  and  will  not  support." 

The  effect  on  the  House  was  such  that  no  one  rose 
to  continue  the  debate.  Next  day  it  was  resumed,  and 
not  only  Labour  speakers,  but  one  after  another  of  the 
Liberals,  including  some  of  the  Prime  Minister's  most 
docile,  old-fashioned  supporters  rose  and  declared  that 
Redmond  and  not  the  Leader  of  the  House  had  expressed 
their  views.  So  began  a  remarkable  struggle  in  which 
the  combined  forces  of  the  private  members — Liberal, 
Labour  and  Irish — united  by  a  common  desire  to  destroy 
the  domination  of  the  Peers,  contended  against  the 
Cabinet's  policy  of  attempting  not  merely  to  limit  the 
power  of  veto  but  to  reconstitute  the  Upper  House.  In 
such  a  process  men  saw  that  the  driving  force  of  the 
majority  would  waste  away  and  that  the  composite 
character  of  their  alliance  would  lead  to  certain  disruption. 

Before  the  debate  on  the  Address  concluded  it  was 
plain  that  Redmond  had  won.  From  that  period  on- 
wards his  popularity,  and,  through  him,  the  popularity 
of  the  party  which  he  led,  was  immensely  increased  in 
Great  Britain.  He  was  regarded  as  one  of  the  men 
who  had  rendered  best  service  to  democracy  against 
privilege.  He  himself  believed  that  in  this  first  contest 
Ireland  had  decided  the  victory — had  decided  the  over- 
throw of  the  House  which  had  so  long  opposed  its 
liberties.    Labour  had  then  neither  the  essential  leader 


REDMOND  AS   CHAIRMAN  47 

nor  the  necessary  parliamentary  strength  :  Liberalism 
was  confused  and  uncertain  at  the  critical  moment. 

Yet  in  the  very  process  of  achieving  this  success  Red- 
mond laid  himself  open  to  attack.  The  Budget  was 
regarded  with  dislike  by  a  very  large  section  of  Irish- 
men, and  apart  from  considerations  of  political  strategy 
the  Irish  members  would  certainly  have  voted  against 
it.  Now,  the  power  was  in  their  hands  to  defeat  it 
finally.  By  so  doing  they  would,  of  course,  justify  to 
some  degree  the  unconstitutional  action  of  the  Lords  ; 
but  this  consideration  did  not  weigh  with  Mr.  O'Brien 
and  Mr.  Healy.  They  accused  Redmond  of  selling  the 
real  interests  of  Ireland  to  keep  a  Government  in  office 
which  could  oifer  nothing  in  return  but  a  gambling  chance 
of  limiting  the  veto  of  the  Lords.  Mr.  O'Brien  was 
firmly  confident  that  no  such  measure  would  ever  pass. 
He  denounced  the  bargain,  not  merely  because  it  was  a 
bargain  in  which  Redmond  accepted  what  was  in  his 
view  a  ruinous  injustice  to  Ireland,  but  because  it  was 
a  bargain  in  which  the  Irish  had  been  outwitted.  This 
line  of  argument  was  to  be  dinned  into  the  ears  of  Ireland 
during  all  the  remaining  years  of  Redmond's  life.  The 
only  conclusive  answer  to  it  was  to  gain  Home  Rule. 
If,  in  the  long  run,  it  came  to  appear  that  the  attackers 
had  been  right  in  their  contention,  and  that  Ireland 
had  never  received  the  expected  return,  the  fault  for 
that  result  lay  with  Ireland  itself  no  less  than  with 
England ;  it  most  assuredly  did  not  lie  with  John 
Redmond.  A  great  weight  of  responsibility  rests  on 
those  who  from  the  first  hour  of  Ireland's  opportunity 
ingeminated  distrust  to  an  over-suspicious  people. 

For  the  moment,  however,  the  attack  made  no  head- 
way. Irishmen  have  a  shrewd  political  sense,  and  they 
felt  that  in  the  struggle  to  pin  Liberal  Ministers  to  the 
true  fighting  objective  Redmond  had  won.  They  were 
also  delighted  to  see  the  Irish  party  openly  exert  its 
power — not   quite   realizing   that  such   exhibitions   were 


48  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

against  the  interest  of  the  democratic  alliance,  whicJi 
had  to  undergo  a  grave  test.  The  Government's  vacil- 
lation had  rendered  another  general  election  necessary 
if  the  Veto  question  were  to  be  fought  out. 

On  April  29th  the  House  adjourned  for  the  Whitsuntide 
recess,  after  which  the  crisis  was  to  come  with  the  decision 
of  the  House  of  Lords  whether  to  accept  or  reject  the 
Veto  Resolution,  which  had  then  passed  the  Commons. 
On  May  7th,  after  a  short  and  sudden  illness,  King  Edward 
died.  Both  the  great  English  parties  were  unwilling  to 
renew  the  most  acute  political  struggle  of  modern  times 
at  the  opening  of  a  new  reign,  and  means  of  accom- 
modation was  sought  through  a  Conference  which  sat 
first  on  June  16th  and  held  twenty-one  meetings. 
No  representative  of  Ireland  was  on  this  body.  On 
November  10th  it  reported  that  no  result  had  come  of 
its  efforts,  and  a  new  general  election  was  fixed  for 
December  1st. 

When  the  Conference  finally  broke  down  Redmond 
was  on  his  way  back  from  America,  whither  he  had  gone 
accompanied  by  Mr.  Devlin.  Mr.  T.  P.  O'Connor  at 
the  same  time  undertook  a  tour  in  Canada.  The  success 
of  these  missions  showed  that  the  interest  and  the  con- 
fidence of  the  Irish  race  were  higher  than  at  any  previous 
period  :  the  ambassadors  brought  back  a  contribution 
of  one  hundred  thousand  dollars  to  the  election  funds, 
and  the  ship  on  which  they  came  was  saluted  by  bonfires 
all  along  the  coast  of  Cork.  Ireland,  too,  was  subscribing 
as  Ireland  had  not  subscribed  since  Parnell's  zenith  : 
and  this  was  an  Ireland  in  which  the  land-hunger  had 
been  largely  appeased.  The  theory  that  Ireland's  demand 
for  self-government  was  merely  generated  by  Ireland's 
poverty  began  to  look  ridiculous. 

It  was  the  cue  of  the  Tory  Press  at  this  moment  to 
excite  prejudice  against  the  Liberals  by  representing 
them  as  the  bondslaves  of  the  "  dollar  dictator " — 
ordered  about  by  an  Irish  autocrat  with  swollen  money- 


REDMOND  AS  CHAIRMAN  49 

bags  from  New  York.  This  line  of  argument  did  us  little 
harm  in  Great  Britain  ;  in  Ireland  it  improved  Redmond's 
position,  for  it  was  a  useful  answer  to  Mr.  O'Brien's  repre- 
sentation of  him  as  the  abject  tool  of  Liberal  politicians. 
The  election,  on  the  whole,  strengthened  our  party. 
Mr.  Healy  was  thrown  out  ;  and  Mr.  O'Brien,  though  he 
retained  the  seven  seats  held  by  his  adherents  in  Cork, 
failed  in  two  out  of  three  personal  candidatures. 

In  Great  Britain  the  second  election  of  the  year  1910 
had  the  surprising  result  of  reproducing  almost  exactly 
the  same  division  of  parties  :  and  this  added  greatly  to 
the  strength  of  the  Government.  The  Tory  leaders 
now,  instead  of  insisting  on  a  maintenance  of  the  old 
Constitution,  went  into  alternative  proposals — including 
the  adoption  of  the  Referendum.  This  was  their  con- 
structive line ;  the  destructive  resolved  itself  largely 
into  an  endeavour  to  focus  resistance  on  the  question 
of  Ireland — the  purpose  for  which  alone,  they  said, 
abolition  of  the  veto  was  demanded.  As  has  often  hap- 
pened, action  taken  by  the  Vatican  gave  the  opponents 
of  Home  Rule  a  useful  weapon.  The  Ne  Temere  decree, 
promulgated  in  the  year  1908,  laid  down  that  any  marriage 
to  which  a  Roman  Catholic  was  a  party,  if  not  solemnized 
according  to  the  rites  of  the  Church  of  Rome,  should  be 
treated  as  invalid  from  a  canonical  point  of  view. 
Although  legally  binding,  it  should  be  regarded  as  no 
marriage  in  the  eyes  of  an  orthodox  Roman  Catholic 
until  it  was  regularized  in  the  manner  provided  by  the 
Church.  The  case  of  an  unhappy  mixed  marriage  in 
Belfast  was  exploited  with  fury  on  a  thousand  platforms. 
Another  decree,  the  Motu  Propria,  was  construed  as 
seeking  to  establish  immunity  for  the  clergy  from  pro- 
ceedings in  civil  courts.  This,  however,  was  of  less 
platform  value,  because  no  instance  could  be  found  of 
a  practical  application  ;  whereas  the  McCann  case 
unquestionably  gave  Tory  disputants  a  formidable 
instrument  for  evoking  the  ancient  distrust  of   Roman 

6 


60  JOHN   REDMOND'S   LAST   YEARS 

Catholicism  which  is  so  deeply  ingrained  in  the  Protestant 
mind. 

In  spite  of  all,  the  English  democracy  remained  steady 
in  its  purpose.  Party  feeling,  however,  ran  to  heights 
not  known  in  living  memory.  In  July  1911  the  Parlia- 
ment Bill  went  to  the  Lords,  where  it  was  altered  out 
of  all  recognition.  On  July  20th  Mr.  Asquith  sent  a 
letter  to  Mr.  Balfour  stating  that  the  King  had  guaranteed 
that  he  would  exercise  his  prerogative  to  secure  that 
the  Bill  should  be  passed  substantially  as  it  left  the 
Commons.  On  the  24th  the  extreme  section  of  the 
Tory  party,  headed  by  Lord  Hugh  Cecil,  refused  to  allow 
the  Prime  Minister  a  hearing  in  the  House  of  Commons. 

From  an  Irish  point  of  view  the  episode  was  note- 
worthy. At  the  outset  of  this  critical  session  Redmond 
had  cautioned  his  party  to  abstain  from  giving  provo- 
cation and  from  allowing  themselves  to  be  provoked. 
The  counsel  was  the  harder  to  follow  because  some  of 
the  most  vehement  of  the  younger  Tories  sat  below  the 
gangway,  almost  in  physical  contact  with  Irish  members, 
and  hot  words  passed.  Still,  it  was  grounded  into  all 
that  we  should  not  allow  the  great  issue  then  at  trial 
to  be  represented  as  an  Irish  quarrel.  Our  cause  was 
linked  with  the  whole  cause  of  democracy  as  against 
privilege  :  it  was  an  issue  for  the  whole  United  Kingdom  ; 
and  that  was  never  plainer  than  on  this  day  of  July. 
English,  Scottish  and  Welsh  members  hurled  interrup- 
tions and  taunts  at  each  other  across  the  floor  of  the 
House,  while  Irish  members  sat  watching.  Something 
older  and  more  far-reaching  than  the  opposition  to  Ire- 
land's demand  now  was  felt  itself  assailed  ;  and  a  force 
in  which  the  Irish  movement  was  only  one  stream  of 
many  swept  against  it.  Anger  in  the  Tory  party  was 
not  directed  against  Ireland's  representatives  ;  and  an 
odd  chance  made  this  plain.  The  fierce  scene  in  the 
House  reached  its  culmination  when  Ministers  withdrew 
in  a  body  from  the  Treasury  Bench  and  the  two  sides 


REDMOND   AS   CHAIRMAN  61 

oi  the  House  stood  up,  one  cheering,  the  other  hooting, 
in  opposite  ranks.  For  a  moment  it  seemed  as  if  the 
affair  would  come  to  blows,  till  Mr.  Will  Crooks,  with  a 
genial  inspiration,  uplifted  his  voice  in  song  :  "  Should 
auld  acquaintance  be  forgot  ?  "  The  tension  was  re- 
laxed and  members  moved  out  in  groups — we  Irishmen 
necessarily  among  the  Tories.  In  the  movement  I  saw 
Willie  Redmond  go  up  to  one  of  the  fiercest  among  the 
Ulstermen,  whose  face  was  dark  with  passion.  CoUoquy 
began  :  "  Isn't  it  a  hard  thing  that  you  wouldn't  let  us 
speak  ?  "  The  Ulsterman  turned  :  "  Not  let  you  speak  ? 
My  dear  fellow,  we'd  listen  to  you  for  as  long  as  you 
liked — it's  only  these  accursed  English  Liberals."  And 
upon  this  mutual  understanding  the  two  Irishmen  walked 
down  the  floor  into  the  Lobby  exchanging  expressions 
of  mutual  goodwill  and  possibly  of  mutual  comprehension. 

This  little  piece  of  by-play,  so  full  of  Irish  nature, 
struck  me  at  the  time  as  something  more  than  amusing 
— as  having  in  it  a  ray  of  hopeful  significance.  But  the 
most  sanguine  imagination  would  never  have  foreseen 
the  series  of  events  which  brought  it  to  pass,  not  merely 
that  these  two  men  should  wear  the  same  uniform,  on 
a  common  service,  but  that  the  same  Gazette  should 
publish  both  their  names  as  enrolled  on  the  same  day 
in  the  French  Legion  of  Honour.  On  that  day  Mr,  Charles 
Craig  was  a  prisoner  in  Germany,  wounded  in  a  famous 
fight ;  and  Willie  Redmond  was  in  a  grave  towards 
which  Ulster  comrades  had  been  the  first  to  carry  him. 
There  is  an  Irish  saying,  "  Men  may  meet,  but  the 
mountains  stand  apart."  In  July  1911  such  an  asso- 
ciation as  the  Gazette  of  July  1917  illustrated  would 
have  seemed  hardly  more  possible  than  the  meeting  of 
the  everlasting  hills. 

The  dramatic  crisis  of  the  parliamentary  struggle 
between  the  two  Houses  of  Parliament  did  not,  and 
could  not,  come  in  the  House  of  Commons.  Its  place 
was  in  the  final  citadel  of  privilege,   and  privilege  sur- 


32  JOHN   REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

rendered  on  August  10th,  when  the  Bill  passed  the  Lords 
after  the  most  exciting  and  uncertain  division  that  is 
ever  likely  to  be  known.  But  there  were  elements  in 
the  Tory  party  which  did  not  accept  defeat,  though 
they  had  not  yet  clearly  decided  on  what  battleground 
to  renew  their  efforts.  For  the  moment,  however,  men 
were  disposed  to  pause  and  take  stock  of  the  new  situation. 

But  at  such  a  time  events  cannot  stand  still,  and 
almost  at  the  same  moment  as  the  Parliament  Act  was 
carried,  the  Government  took  a  step  which  gravely 
affected  the  Irish  party.  Payment  of  members  was 
established  by  a  resolution  of  the  House  of  Commons. 

Irish  Nationalist  members  had  always  been  paid  from 
the  party  fund,  that  is  to  say,  by  their  supporters.  Pay- 
ment was  conditional,  not  of  right,  and  it  was  not  made 
except  when  the  member  was  in  attendance  :  it  amounted 
only  to  twenty  pounds  a  month.  The  new  payment 
came  from  the  British  Treasury  ;  it  was  made  irrespec- 
tive of  the  desire  of  constituents,  or  of  any  other  con- 
sideration ;  and  it  amounted  to  a  sum  which  in  a  country 
of  small  incomes  sounded  very  imposing.  Unquestion- 
ably the  receipt  of  it  weakened  the  position  of  the  party 
in  the  eyes  of  Ireland,  and  gave  a  new  sting  to  the  charge 
of  a  bargain. 

All  this  was  clearly  discerned  in  advance,  by  no  one 
more  than  by  Redmond  ;  and  an  amendment  was  moved 
to  strike  Irish  members  out  of  the  application  of  the 
resolution.  But  the  situation  was  hopelessly  involved, 
the  Irish  party  having  repeatedly  voted  for  payment  of 
members  as  part  of  the  Radical  programme  which  they 
supported  as  affecting  any  normally  governed  country  ; 
and  Government  refused  to  make  the  exception. 

As  a  result,  Redmond's  following  lost  much  of  the 
prestige  which  had  resulted  from  scrupulous  observance 
of  the  understanding  that  no  Nationalist  member  should 
take  office  under  Government.  To  join  the  Irish  party 
had    been,    in    effect,  for  most   men,  to  make  a  vow  of 


REDMOND  AS  CHAIRMAN  53 

poverty.  Now,  on  the  contrary,  it  involved  acceptance 
of  what  was  in  Ireland's  eyes  a  well-paid  and  un- 
laborious  office.  The  Irish  are  no  less  prone  than  any 
other  nation  to  take  a  cynical  view  of  these  matters. 

Yet  assuredly  no  man  ever  gave  more  service  for  less 
pay  than  the  Nationalist  leader,  and  it  was  the  harder 
because  he  was  a  man  who  liked  comfort  and  had  no 
ambition.  If  at  the  time  of  the  great  "  split "  he  had 
stood  down  from  politics,  success  would  have  been  assured 
to  him  at  the  Bar  in  Ireland,  or,  more  surely  still,  and  far 
more  profitably,  at  Westminster  itself.  There  never  was 
anyone  so  well-fitted  for  the  work  of  a  parliamentary 
barrister  who  has  to  deal  with  great  interests  before  a 
tribunal  largely  composed  of  laymen.  No  one  had  the 
House  of  Commons  tone  more  perfectly  than  Redmond, 
and  no  one  that  I  ever  heard  equalled  his  gift  for  making 
a  complicated  issue  apj)ear  simple.  When  he  was  thrown 
out  of  Parliament  at  the  Cork  election,  he  thought  of 
retirement,  mainly  for  one  reason  :  it  would  be  better 
for  his  children.  Yet,  first  by  personal  loyalty  to 
Parnell,  later  by  his  loyalty  to  Ireland,  he  was  held  firm 
to  his  task — always  a  poor  man,  always  knowing  that 
it  lay  in  his  power,  without  the  least  sacrifice  of  principle, 
to  become  rich  by  a  way  of  work  less  laborious  and 
infinitely  less  harassing  than  that  which  he  pursued. 

The  effect  upon  the  Irish  situation  produced  by  the 
payment  of  members  was  slow  to  develop,  and  obscure. 
But  an  obvious  and  grave  complication  was  introduced 
into  both  British  and  Irish  politics  at  the  moment  when 
the  democratic  alliance  had  achieved  its  first  great  objec- 
tive. Parliament  had  been  in  session  almost  continu- 
ously since  the  beginning  of  1909,  with  the  added  strain 
of  two  general  elections  thrown  in.  There  was  a  wide- 
spread desire  to  clear  the  autumn  of  1911,  so  that  members 
might  have  some  breathing  space,  and,  not  less  important, 
devote  themselves  to  propagandist  work  in  their  con- 
stituencies  for   the   new   struggle   of   carrying   measures 


54  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

under  the  hardly  won  Parliament  Act.  Each  of  these 
measures  must  involve  a  fight  prolonged  over  three 
years. 

But  this  desire  ran  against  the  purposes  of  Mr. 
Asquith's  chief  lieutenant,  whose  power  and  popularity 
were  now  at  their  height.  Mr.  Lloyd  George  in  the 
course  of  the  session  had  introduced  his  Insurance  Bill, 
and  it  was  welcomed  v;ith  astonishing  effusion  from 
both  sides  of  the  House.  As  discussion  proceeded,  how- 
ever, the  complexity  and  difficulty  of  its  proposals,  and 
the  number  of  oppositions  which  they  provoked,  became 
so  apparent  that  it  was  not  in  human  nature  for  politicians 
at  such  a  crisis  to  forgo  the  opportunity.  Most  of  the 
Liberal  party  would  have  preferred  to  drop  the  Bill 
temporarily  and  refer  it  to  a  Committee  of  Enquiry. 
Mr.  Lloyd  George  was  convinced  that  this  would  be  fatal 
to  his  measure,  concerning  which  he  was  possessed  by 
a  missionary  zeal.  Probably  when  his  career  comes 
under  the  study  of  impartial  history  it  will  be  perceived 
that  never  at  any  moment  was  he  so  passionately  and 
so  honestly  in  earnest  as  upon  this  quest.  But  it  is 
certain  that  by  pursuit  of  it  he  created  enormous  diffi- 
culties in  the  way  of  those  reforms  which  the  democratic 
alliance  at  large  most  desired  to  achieve.  He  carried 
his  point ;  an  autumn  session  followed,  in  which  the 
mind  of  the  electorate  was  diverted  from  the  Irish  ques- 
tion and  all  other  questions  except  that  of  Insurance, 
and  Parliament  itself  was  jaded  to  the  brink  of 
exhaustion. 

The  matter  was  difficult  for  us  in  Ireland  because, 
owing  to  the  different  system  of  Public  Health  Adminis- 
tration, many  of  the  most  important  provisions  could 
not  appl}?^,  and  because  the  Bill  as  a  whole  was  framed 
to  meet  the  needs  of  a  highly  industrialized  and  crowded 
community.  Broadly  speaking,  it  was  less  desired  in 
Ireland  than  in  Great  Britain  ;  and  even  for  Great 
Britain    Mr.    Lloyd    George    was    legislating    in    advance 


REDMOND  AS  CHAIRMAN  66 

of  public  opinion  rather  than  in  response  to  it.  Mr. 
O'Brien  and  his  following  vehemently  opposed  the  appli- 
cation of  the  Bill  to  Ireland ;  and  the  Irish  Catholic 
Bishops,  by  a  special  resolution,  expressed  their  view  to 
the  same  effect.  The  Bill,  however,  had  a  powerful 
advocate  in  Mr.  Devlin,  and  the  Irish  party  decided  to 
support  its  extension  to  Ireland,  subject  to  certain  modi- 
fications which  they  obtained. 

Apart  from  the  new  unsettlement  of  public  opinion 
which  it  created  both  in  Great  Britain  and  in  Ireland, 
the  Insurance  Act  added  to  our  difficulties  on  the  Home 
Rule  question.  It  was  clear  already  that  the  question 
of  finance  lay  like  a  rock  ahead.  Up  to  1908  the  proceeds 
of  Irish  revenue  had  always  given  a  margin  over  the 
cost  of  all  Irish  services,  though  that  margin  had  dwindled 
almost  to  vanishing-point.  Old  Age  Pensions  completely 
turned  the  beam  and  left  us  in  the  position  of  costing 
more  than  we  contributed.  Now  the  outlay  on  Insur- 
ance added  half  a  milUon  a  year  to  the  balance  against  us. 

Still,  difficulties  and  perplexities  were  not  limited 
to  one  side.  The  Tory  party  were  much  divided  since 
the  crisis  on  the  Parliament  Act.  A  section,  and  the 
most  active  section,  had  been  violently  opposed  to  the 
surrender  on  the  critical  division,  and  these  men  were 
profoundly  discontented  with  Mr.  Balfour's  leadership  ; 
so  Mr.  Balfour,  yielding  to  intimations,  suddenly  re- 
signed. Somewhat  unexpectedly,  Mr.  Bonar  Law  was 
chosen  to  succeed  him,  Mr.  Long  and  Mr.  Chamberlain 
waiving  their  respective  claims. 

This  choice  was  of  sinister  augury.  Mr.  Law  did  not 
know  Ireland.  But,  Canadian-born,  he  came  from  a 
country  in  which  the  Irish  factions  and  theological 
enmities  had  always  had  their  counterpart ;  his  father, 
a  Presbyterian  Minister,  came  of  Ulster  stock.  All  the 
blood  in  him  instinctively  responded  to  the  tap  of  the 
Orange  drum.  As  far  back  as  January  27,  1911,  he  had 
urged  armed  resistance  to  Home  Rule. 


66  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

This  was  a  line  which  Mr.  Balfour  did  not  see  his  way 
to  take,  and  probably  here  rather  than  elsewhere  lay 
the  reason  for  the  choice  of  Mr.  Bonar  Law.  The  most 
active  section  of  the  Tory  party — probably  a  minority, 
for  in  such  cases  minorities  decide — regarded  the  passing 
of  the  Parliament  Act  as  an  outrage  on  the  Constitution, 
which  should  be  resisted  by  any  means,  constitutional 
or  unconstitutional.  But  no  possibility  existed  of  mobil- 
izing a  force  in  Great  Britain  to  fight  for  the  veto  of  the 
House  of  Lords,  nor  again  did  the  resistance  to  a  new 
Franchise  Act,  or  even  to  Welsh  Disestablishment,  promise 
to  be  desperate.  In  one  part  only  of  these  islands  was 
there  material  for  a  form  of  struggle  in  which  the  ballot- 
box  and  the  division  lobby  might  be  supplemented,  if 
not  replaced,  by  quite  other  methods  of  political  war. 
The  Tory  party  saw  in  Ulster  their  best  fighting  chance. 
There  was  no  use  in  telling  them  that  they  jeopardized 
the  British  Constitution  ;  from  their  point  of  view  the 
British  Constitution — as  they  had  known  it — was  already 
gone  ;  it  was  destroyed  in  principle  and  must  be  either 
restored  or  refashioned  according  to  their  mind. 

This  temper,  with  the  attitude  towards  parliamentary 
tradition  which  it  produced,  rendered  the  political  history 
of  the  next  two  and  a  half  years  unlike  any  other  in  the 
history  of  these  countries.  The  main  purpose  of  this 
book  is  to  record  and  illustrate  Redmond's  action  during 
the  period  which  began  with  the  opening  of  the  Great 
War.  But  since  that  action  was  conditioned  by  the 
circumstances  preceding  the  war — since  in  two  notable 
ways  it  aimed  at  a  solution  of  the  tierce  political  struggle 
which  the  war  interrupted — the  political  history  con- 
nected with  the  passage  of  the  Home  Rule  Bill  through 
Parliament  must  be  outlined  in  detail,  with  avoidance, 
so  far  as  may  be,  of  a  controversial  tone. 


REDMOND  AS  CHAIRMAN  57 


It  is  however  necessary,  before  closing  this  preliminary 
review,  to  take  some  account  of  Redmond's  relation  to 
his  party,  and,  in  general,  of  the  working  of  the  parlia- 
mentary machine.  Difficulties  were  imposed  on  him  and 
on  the  party  from  1910  onwards  by  our  very  success. 

Electoral  chances  had  placed  us  apparently  in  the 
position  of  maximum  power.  From  January  1910  on- 
wards we  had  a  Government  committed  to  Home  Rule, 
yet  so  far  dependent  on  us  that  we  could  put  it  out  at 
any  moment.  Yet  this  was  by  no  means  an  ideal  state 
of  affairs.  The  Government's  weakness  was  our  weak- 
ness, and  they  were  liable  to  the  reproach  that  they 
never  proposed  a  Home  Rule  measure  except  when  they 
could  not  dispense  with  the  Irish  vote.  Still,  from  this 
embarrassing  position  we  achieved  an  extraordinary 
result.  Right  across  our  path  was  the  obstacle  of  the 
House  of  Lords.  It  was  not  an  impassable  barrier  for 
measures  in  which  the  British  working  classes  were  keenly 
interested — for  it  let  the  Trades  Disputes  Bill  go  through  ; 
but  it  was  wholly  regardless  of  Irish  and  of  Welsh  popular 
opinion.  Under  Redmond's  leadership  we  smashed  the 
House  of  Lords.  The  English  middle  class  instinct  for 
compromise  was  asserting  itself,  when  he  took  hold 
and  gave  direction  to  the  great  mass  of  popular  indigna- 
tion which  the  hereditary  chamber  had  roused  against 
itself. 

Yet  guiding  action  in  an  alliance  of  which  he  was  not 
the  head  was  delicate  work.  A  clumsy  speaker  in  debate 
might  do  infinite  mischief.  When  a  party  is  in  opposition, 
all  its  members  can  talk,  and  are  encouraged  to  talk, 
to  the  utmost ;  little  harm  can  be  done  to  one's  own 
side  by  what  is  said  in  criticism  of  measures  proposed. 
Support  and  exposition  is  a  much  more  ticklish  business. 
Add  to  this  the  fact  that  under  the  fully  developed  system 


58  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

of  parliamentary  obstruction — that  is,  of  using  discussion 
to  prevent  legislation  from  being  put  through — the  best 
service  that  a  member  can  render  to  Government  is  to 
say  nothing,  but  vote. 

•  The  tactics  of  limiting  discussion  to  chosen  speakers 
in  important  debates  and  of  discouraging  sharply  any 
intervention  which  might  help  to  delay  a  division  were 
pushed  further  in  the  Irish  party  than  elsewhere.  We 
were  there  under  different  conditions  from  the  rest  ;  our 
objective  was  as  clearly  defined  as  in  a  military  operation  : 
and  we  all  understood  the  position.  We  recognized  also 
that  negotiation  must  be  a  matter  for  Redmond  and 
his  inner  cabinet  of  three,  and  that  many  things  could 
not  be  usefully  discussed  in  a  body  of  seventy  men.  But 
the  net  result  was  that  the  bulk  of  the  party  lost  interest 
in  their  work,  and,  which  was  worse,  that  Ireland  lost 
interest  in  the  bulk  of  the  party.  It  followed,  not  un- 
naturally, that  the  constituencies  held  one  voting  machine 
to  be  as  good  as  another,  and  they  did  not  generally 
send  any  men  who  could  have  been  of  service  in  debate. 
They  did  not  any  longer  see  their  members  heading  a 
fiery  campaign  against  rents,  or  flamboyant  in  attack 
on  the  Government ;  they  heard  very  little  of  them  at 
all.  They  knew  little  and  cared  less  about  the  work  of 
education  in  British  constituencies,  which  had  to  be 
carried  on  through  the  mouths  of  Irish  members. 

Redmond  has  often  been  blamed,  but  quite  unjustly, 
for  failure  to  attract  men  of  talent  into  his  ranks.  Parnell 
had  that  power.  He  had,  and  used,  the  right  of  suggest- 
ing names.  But  under  the  constitution  of  the  United 
Irish  League  (originally  the  work  of  Mr.  William  O'Brien 
when  reunion  was  accomplished  in  1900)  the  machinery 
of  local  conventions  was  set  up  and  no  interference  with 
their  choice  was  permitted  to  the  central  directorate — 
which  could  only  insist  that  a  man  properly  selected 
must  take  the  party  pledge.  Whether  this  machinery 
was  inevitable  or  no,  cannot  be  argued  here  ;    but  Red- 


REDMOND   AS   CHAIRMAN  69 

mond  himself  complained  repeatedly  in  public  that  it 
worked  badly.  Candidates  were  often  chosen  purely 
for  local  and  even  personal  considerations,  and  seldom 
with  any  real  thought  of  finding  the  man  best  fitted 
to  do  Ireland's  work  at  Westminster. 

This  evil,  for  it  was  an  evil,  resulted  from  the  political 
stagnation  in  a  country  where  one  dominant  permanent 
issue  overshadowed  all  others.  There  being  no  Unionist 
candidature  possible  in  the  majority  of  constituencies, 
any  contest  was  deprecated — and  from  some  points  of 
view  rightly — as  leading  to  possible  faction  between 
Nationalists.  The  choice  of  a  member  really  fell  into 
too  few  hands  ;  the  electorate  as  a  whole  was  not  suffi- 
ciently interested.  Nevertheless,  several  able  men  came 
into  our  ranks,  and  under  the  conditions  it  was  not  possible 
to  utilize  their  talents  fully,  as  they  would  have  been 
utilized  had  we  been  in  opposition,  not  in  support  of 
the  Government.  More  could  have  been  done,  however, 
to  give  them  their  opportunity,  and  the  responsibility 
for  not  varying  the  list  of  speakers  rests  on  Redmond. 
It  was  his  policy  to  avoid  personal  intervention,  and  to 
leave  such  choices  to  be  settled  by  proposals  from  the 
party  itself.  This  was  a  real  limitation  to  his  excellence 
as  leader — for  leader  he  was. 

There  was,  however,  an  even  more  important  limitation 
arising  out  of  his  personal  temperament.  As  chairman, 
I  never  expect  to  see  his  equal.  He  had  the  most  perfect 
public  manners  of  any  man  I  have  known,  whether  in 
dealing  with  some  vast  assembly  or  small  confidential 
gathering.  The  latter  type  of  meeting  is  the  more  difficult 
to  handle,  and  nothing  could  exceed  his  gift  for  presiding 
over  and  guiding  debate.  He  could  set  out  a  political 
situation  to  his  party  with  extraordinary  force  and 
lucidity.  He  could  also,  when  he  chose,  so  present  an 
issue  as  to  suggest  almost  irresistibly  the  conclusion  which 
he  desired — and  this  was  how  he  led.  Where  he  came  short 
in  the  quality  of  leadership  was  in  the  personal  contact. 


60  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

His  relations  with  all  his  followers  in  the  party  were 
courteous  and  cordial ;  yet  without  the  least  appearance 
of  aloofness  he  was  always  aloof.  He  did  not  invite 
discussion.  It  needed  some  courage  to  go  to  him  with 
a  question  in  policy,  and  if  you  went,  the  answer  would 
be  simply  a  "  Yes  "  or  *'  No."  He  lacked  what  Lord  Morley 
attributed  to  Gladstone,  "  the  priceless  gift  of  throwing 
his  mind  into  common  stock."  No  one  thought  more 
constantly,  or  further  ahead  ;  but  he  could  not,  rather 
than  would  not,  impart  his  mind  by  bringing  it  into 
contact  with  others.  Men  like  being  taken  into  their 
leader's  confidence,  and  he  knew  this  and,  I  have  reason 
to  believe,  knew  the  disability  which  his  temperament 
laid  upon  him.  Yet  he  never  made  an  effort  to  combat 
it,  partly  I  think  from  pride,  for  he  hated  everything 
that  savoured  of  earwigging ;  he  Avas  not  going  to  put 
constraint  upon  himself  that  his  following  might  be 
more  enthusiastic.  There  was  no  make-believe  about 
him,  and  he  was  never  one  who  liked  discussion  for 
discussion's    sake. 

Profoundly  conservative,  he  had  no  welcome  for  novel 
points  of  view.  I  cannot  put  it  more  strongly  than  by 
saying  that  he  was  more  apparently  aware  of  the  qualities 
which  made  T.  M.  Kettle  difficult  to  handle  in  his  team 
than  of  those  which  made  that  brilliant  personality  an 
ornament  and  a  force  in  our  party.  A  more  serious 
aspect  of  this  conservatism  was  the  separation  which 
it  produced  between  him  and  the  newer  Ireland.  He 
welcomed  the  Gaelic  League  and  disliked  Sinn  Fein, 
but  undervalued  both  as  forces  :  he  was  never  really  in 
touch  with  either  of  them.  Ideally  speaking,  he  ought 
to  have  seen  to  it  that  his  party,  which  represented  mainly 
the  standpoint  of  Parnell's  day,  was  kept  in  sympathy 
_with  the  new  Young  Ireland. 

But  from  the  point  of  view  of  those  who  shared  his 
outlook — and  they  were  the  vast  majority,  in  Ireland 
and  in  the  party — Redmond's  essential  limitation,  as  a 


REDMOND   AS   CHAIRMAN  61 

leader,  was  that  he  lacked  the  magnetic  qualities  which 
produce  idolatry  and  blind  allegiance.  What  his  followers 
gave  him  was  admiration,  liking  and  profound  respect.- 
No  less  than  this  was  strictly  due  to  his  high  standard 
of  honour,  his  scorn  of  all  personal  pettiness,  his  control 
of  temper.  In  twelve  years  I  heard  many  complaints  of 
the  manner  in  which  things  were  managed  in  the  party  : 
I  scarcely  ever  remember  to  have  heard  anyone  complain 
of  him.  He  was  always  spoken  of  as  "  The  Chairman  "  ; 
no  one  attributed  to  him  sole  responsibility  ;  and  he 
was  the  last  on  whom  any  man  desired  to  lay  a  fault. 
Yet  when  it  came,  as  it  often  did,  to  a  question  of 
weighing  advices  one  against  the  other,  there  was  no 
mistake  how  men's  opinions  inclined.  He  had  taught 
his  party  by  experience  to  have  almost  implicit  confidence 
in  his  judgment ;  and  by  this  earned  confidence  he  led 
and  he  ruled. 


CHAPTER   III 
THE   HOME   RULE   BILL   OF   1912 

THE  year  1912,  in  which  the  straight  fight  on  Home 
Rule  was  to  begin,  opened  stormily.  Mr.  Churchill 
was  announced  to  speak  under  the  auspices  of  the  Ulster 
Liberal  Association  in  the  Ulster  Hall  at  Belfast.  It  was 
the  hall  in  which  his  father,  Lord  Randolph  Churchill, 
had  used  the  famous  phrase  "  Ulster  will  fight  and  Ulster 
will  be  right."  Belfast  was  determined  that  the  son 
should  not  unsay  what  the  father  had  said  in  this  conse- 
crated building ;  it  would  be,  as  an  Ulster  member 
put  it  in  the  House  of  Commons,  "  a  profanation."  On 
this  first  round,  Ulster  won  ;  Mr.  Churchill  spoke  at 
Belfast,  but  not  in  the  Ulster  Hall.  There  were  angry 
demonstrations  against  him  ;  his  person  had  to  be 
strongly  protected  and  he  went  away  from  the  meeting 
by  back  streets.  It  was  noticeable  that  no  such  pre- 
cautions were  needed  for  Redmond,  who  attended  the 
meeting  and  walked  quite  unmolested  through  the  crowd. 
The  British  electorate,  as  a  whole,  was  somewhat  scan- 
dalized by  the  exhibition  of  so  violent  a  temper  ;  but 
the  education  of  the  British  electorate  was  only  beginning. 
Congestion  of  business  from  the  previous  session  deferred 
the  introduction  of  the  Home  Rule  Bill  till  April.  Great 
demonstrations  for  and  against  it  were  held  in  advance. 
In  Dublin  on  March  31st  was  such  a  gathering  as  scarcely 
any  man  remembered.  O'Connell  Street  is  rather  a 
boulevard  than  a  thoroughfare  ;  it  is  as  wide  as  Whitehall 
and  its  length  is  about  the  same.  On  that  day,  from  the 
Parnell  monument  at  the  north  end  to  the  O'Connell 
monument  at  the  south,  you  could  have  walked  on  the 

62 


THE    HOME    RULE   BILL   OF    1912  63 

shoulders  of  the  people.  Four  separate  platforms  were 
erected,  and  Redmond  spoke  from  that  nearest  to  the 
statue  of  his  old  chief.  He  dwelt  on  the  universality  of 
the  demonstration ;  nine  out  of  eleven  corporations 
were  represented  officially  by  their  civic  officers  ;  pro- 
fessional men,  business  men,  were  all  fully  to  the  fore. 
But  one  section  of  his  countrymen  were  conspicuously 
absent.     To  Ulster  he  had  this  to  say  : 

'*  We  have  not  one  word  of  reproach  or  one  word  of 
bitter  feeling.  We  have  one  feeling  only  in  our  hearts, 
and  that  is  an  earnest  longing  for  the  arrival  of  the  day 
of  reconciliation." 

A  feature  of  that  gathering,  little  noted  at  the  time, 
assumes  strange  significance  in  retrospect.  At  one  plat- 
form Patrick  Pearse,  then  headmaster  of  St.  Enda's 
school,  spoke  in  Irish.  What  he  said  may  be  thus  roughly 
rendered  : 

"  There  are  as  many  men  here  as  would  destroy  the 
British  Empire  if  they  were  united  and  did  their  utmost. 
We  have  no  wish  to  destroy  the  British,  we  only  want 
our  freedom.  We  differ  among  ourselves  on  small  points, 
but  we  agree  that  we  want  freedom,  in  some  shape  or 
other.  There  are  two  sections  of  us — one  that  would 
be  content  to  remain  under  the  British  Government  in 
our  own  land,  another  that  never  paid,  and  never  will 
pay,  homage  to  the  King  of  England.  I  am  of  the  latter, 
and  everyone  knows  it.  But  I  should  think  myself  a 
traitor  to  my  country  if  I  did  not  answer  the  summons 
to  this  gathering,  for  it  is  clear  to  me  that  the  Bill  which 
we  support  to-day  will  be  for  the  good  of  Ireland  and 
that  we  shall  be  stronger  with  it  than  without  it.  I  am 
not  accepting  the  Bill  in  advance.  We  may  have  to 
refuse  it.  We  are  here  only  to  say  that  the  voice  of 
Ireland  must  be  listened  to  henceforward.  Let  us  unite 
and  win  a  good  Act  from  the  British  ;  I  think  it  can 
be  done.  But  if  we  are  tricked  this  time,  there  is  a 
party  in  Ireland,  and  I  am  one  of  them,  that  will  advise 


64  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

the  Gael  to  have  no  counsel  or  dealings  with  the  Gall 
[the  foreigner]  for  ever  again,  but  to  answer  them  hence- 
forward "v^ith  the  strong  hand  and  the  sword's  edge.  Let 
the  Gall  understand  that  if  we  are  cheated  once  more 
there  will  be  red  war  in  Ireland." 

The  platform  where  Pearse  spoke  was  set  up  within 
a  stone's  throw  of  the  General  Post  Office  in  which,  four 
years  later,  he  was  to  give  effect  to  the  words  he  spoke 
then  and  to  earn  his  own  death  in  undoing  the  work  of 
Redmond's  lifetime.  At  that  moment  no  one  heeded 
his  utterance,  nor  the  speech,  also  in  Irish,  of  Professor 
John  MacNeill  from  another  platform,  which  went,  as 
its  speaker  was  destined  to  go,  half  the  way  with  Pearse. 

But  Redmond  never  attempted  to  conceal  the  existence 
of  this  element  in  Ireland.  Speaking  on  the  introduction 
of  the  Home  Rule  Bill  on  April  11th,  he  dealt  at  the  very 
opening  with  the  charge  that  the  Irish  people  wanted 
separation  and  that  the  Irish  leaders  were  separatists  in 
disguise : 

*'  I  will  be  perfectly  frank  on  this  matter.  There 
always  has  been,  and  there  is  to-day,  a  certain  section 
of  Irishmen  who  would  like  to  see  separation  from  this 
country.  They  are  a  small,  a  very  small  section.  They 
were  once  a  very  large  section.  They  are  a  very  small 
section,  but  the  men  who  hold  these  views  at  this  moment 
only  desire  separation  as  an  alternative  to  the  present 
system,  and  if  you  change  the  present  system  and  give 
into  the  hands  of  Irishmen  the  management  of  purely 
Irish  affairs,  even  that  small  feeling  in  favour  of  separa- 
tion will  disappear  ;  and  if  it  survives  at  all,  I  would 
like  to  know  how  under  those  circumstances  it  could  be 
stronger  or  more  powerful  for  mischief  than  at  the  present 
moment." 

Sincerer  words  were  never  spoken,  nor,  I  think,  a  better 
justified  forecast.  Where  Redmond  and  all  of  us  were 
wrong  was  that  we  underestimated  the  possibility  of 
accomplishing  what  Pearse  ultimately  accomplished,  even 


THE   HOME   RULE   BILL   OF   1912  65 

when  assisted  by  the  widespread  disillusionment  and 
sense  of  betrayal  which  was  the  atmosphere  of   1916. 

But  no  one  in  Ireland  in  1912  thought  of  a  separatist 
rebellion.  What  M'as  on  all  tongues  was  the  possibility 
of  physical  resistance  to  Home  Rule.  The  debate  on 
the  first  reading  went  by  with  little  reference  to  this 
contingency,  but  Mr.  Bonar  Law  closed  his  speech  on  that 
note.  He  had  attended  the  great  counter-demonstration 
in  Belfast  which  followed  ours  in  Dublin  and  had  seen 
in  it  "  the  expression  of  the  soul  of  a  people.'* 

"  These  people  look  upon  their  being  subject  to  an 
executive  Government  taken  out  of  the  Parliament  iu 
Dublin  with  as  much  horror,  I  believe  with  more  horror, 
than  the  people  of  Poland  ever  regarded  their  being  put 
under  subjection  by  Russia ;  they  say  they  will  not 
submit  except  by  force  to  such  government.  These 
people  in  Ulster  are  under  no  illusion.  They  know  they 
cannot  fight  the  British  Army.  But  these  men  are 
ready,  in  what  they  believe  to  be  the  cause  of  justice 
and  liberty,  to  lay  down  their  lives." 

Bloodshed,  if  bloodshed  there  was  to  be,  was  antici- 
pated in  Ulster  only,  and  the  resistance  indicated  at  this 
point  was  purely  passive.  But  oven  after  the  Bill  had 
been  introduced,  Tories  entertained  the  hope  that  a 
Nationalist  Convention  might  save  them  trouble  and 
reject  what  the  Government  offered.  Even  Mr.  O'Brien, 
however,  had  given  the  Bill  a  lukewarm  approval,  and 
at  this  moment  Redmond's  prestige  stood  very  high. 
When  the  Convention  assembled,  he  utilized  that  advantage 
to  the  full.  These  assemblies  presented  a  problem  which 
might  intimidate  the  most  capable  chairman.  Theoreti- 
cally deliberative,  they  had  at  least  a  representative 
character  ;  all  branches  of  the  United  Irish  League,  all 
branches  of  the  Hibernians  and  Foresters,  all  county 
and  district  councils  sent  up  their  chosen  men,  to  whom 
were  added  such  clergy  as  chose  to  attend.  The  result 
was  a  mass  of  over  two  thousand  persons  packed  into 

6 


66  JOHN   REDMOND'S   LAST   YEARS 

a  single  room  ;  they  deliberated  in  the  physical  con- 
ditions of  a  crowd  ;  hearing  was  difficult,  disorder  only 
too  easily  brought  about.  I  have  seen  one  of  these 
Conventions  sharply  divided  in  opinion,  and  counting 
of  votes  would  have  been  impossible.  On  this  day, 
however,  there  was  only  one  opinion  :  the  business  was 
to  manifest  support  and  to  strengthen  the  leader's  hand. 
Redmond  at  the  outset  laid  down  the  proposition  that 
it  was  their  "  duty  "  as  Nationalists  to  accept  what  he 
described  as  a  far  better  Bill  than  Gladstone  ever  oflfered. 
He  further  indicated  the  ne«d  for  a  resolution  that  the 
question  of  supporting,  proposing  or  rejecting  amend- 
ments should  be  left  to  the  Irish  party.  This  was 
promptly  carried  by  acclamation.  All  decisions  were 
unanimous  that  day. 

But  before  this  or  any  other  resolution  was  put  to 
the  Convention,  Redmond  asked  the  multitude  there  to 
give,  what  they  gave  most  willingly,  a  v/elcome  to  Mr. 
Gladstone's  grandson,  who  as  a  young  member  of  Parlia- 
ment had  just  voted  for  the  Bill.  The  greeting  which  he 
received  showed  that  Ireland  had  not  forgotten  what 
Gladstone's  last  years  had  been. 

In  the  first  of  his  speeches  upon  the  Bill,  Sir  Edward 
Grey,  a  survivor  from  Gladstone's  Ministry,  said,  as  he 
threw  a  glance  back  over  the  struggle  from  1886  to  1893  : 

"  Two  things  stirred  me  at  the  time  ;  they  stir  me 
still.  One  is  Mr.  Gladstone's  intense  grip  of  the  fact 
that  there  was  a  national  spirit  in  Ireland,  and  the 
splendour  of  the  effort  he  made  in  his  last  years  to 
acknowledge  and  reconcile  that  spirit.  The  other  is  the 
Irish  response  to  Mr.  Gladstone.  It  was  not  the  assent  of 
mere  tacticians  who  had  gained  an  advocate  and  a  point. 
It  was  genuine,  warm  and  living  feeling,  a  response  of 
gratitude  and  sympathy  the  same  in  kind  and  as  living 
as  his  own." 

If  Redmond's  task  from  1912  onwards  was  not  light- 
ened by  the  existence  of  any  such  genuine,  warm  and 


THE   HOME   RULE   BILL   OF    1912  67 

living  feeling  for  any  of  Mr.  Asquith's  Ministry,  perhaps 
Ireland  is  not  to  blame.  There  was  no  intense  grip  of 
any  fact  in  the  Government's  attitude,  and  on  one 
cardinal  point  they  were  unstable  as  water.  Sir  Edward 
Carson,  in  opposing  the  introduction  of  the  Bill,  had  used 
the  words  r  "  Vv^h»at  argument  is  there  that  you  can 
raise  for  giving  Home  Rule  to  Ireland  that  you  do  not 
equally  raise  for  giving  Home  Rule  to  that  Protestant 
minority  in  the  north-east  province  ?  "  Redmond,  fol- 
lowing him,  made  one  of  his  few  false  moves  in  debate. 
"  Is  that  the  proposal  ?  Is  that  the  demand  ?  "  he 
asked.  Sir  Edward  Carson  shot  the  question  at  him  : 
"  Will  you  agree  to  it  ?  "  Seldom  does  the  House  see  a 
practised  speaker  so  much  embarrassed  ;  Redmond  in 
confusion  passed  to  another  topic.  He  was  soon  to  be 
confronted  with  that  same  Line  of  reasoning,  pushed  not 
dialectically  by  an  opponent,  but  as  a  step  in  parliamentary 
negotiation  from  the  Treasury  Bench.  Mr.  Churchill,  who 
introduced  the  Second  Reading,  made  it  apparent  that 
the  demonstration  in  Belfast  had  not  been  wasted  on 
him. 

"  Whatever  Ulster's  rights  may  be,"  he  said,  "  they 
cannot  stand  in  the  way  of  the  whole  of  the  rest  of  Ireland. 
Half  a  province  cannot  impose  a  permanent  veto  on  the 
nation.  The  utmost  they  can  claim  is  for  themselves. 
I  ask,  do  they  claim  separate  treatment  for  themselves  ? 
Do  the  counties  of  Down  and  Antr'  n  and  Londonderry, 
for  instance,  ask  to  be  excepted  from  the  scope  of  this 
Bill  ?  Do  they  ask  for  a  parliament  of  their  own,  or 
do  they  wish  to  remain  here  ?     We  ought  to  know." 

This  was  to  proceed  at  once  into  the  region  of  a  bargain. 
Mr.  Gladstone,  with  his  grip  on  the  existence  of  a  national 
spirit  in  Ireland,  would  have  known  that  concession  on 
such  point  was  a  very  different  matter  from  some  altera- 
tic  I  in  the  financial  terms  or  in  the  composition  of  the 
Parliament.  It  admitted,  in  fact,  the  contention  that 
Ireland  was  not  a  nation  but  a  geographical  expression. 


68  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

As  soon  as  the  Bill  went  into  Committee,  the  result 
was  seen.  The  first  serious  amendment  proposed  to 
exclude  the  four  counties,  Antrim,  Down,  Armagh,  and 
Derry,  and  it  M^as  moved  from  the  Liberal  benches.  Three 
Liberal  speakers  supported  it  in  the  early  stages  of  a 
debate  which  lasted  to  the  third  day — and  on  the  division 
the  majority,  which  had  been  100  for  the  Second  Reading, 
fell  to  69.  Mr.  Churchill  did  not  vote — nor,  although 
this  was  not  then  so  apparently  significant,  did  Mr. 
Lloyd  George. 

Thus  from  the  very  first  the  point  of  danger  revealed 
itself.  By  the  mere  threat  of  a  resistance  which  could 
only  be  overcome  through  the  use  of  troops,  Ulster  had 
made  the  first  dint  for  the  insertion  of  a  wedge  into  the 
composite  Home  Rule  alliance,  and  into  the  Cabinet 
itself.  All  this  had  been  gained  without  any  tactical 
sacrifice,  without  even  anything  like  a  full  disclosure 
of  the  force  which  lay  behind  this  line  of  attack. 

Nor  was  the  full  extent  of  weakness  revealed.  In 
such  a  case,  much  depended  on  the  personality  of  the 
man  who  moved  the  amendment,  and  Mr.  Agar-Robartes 
was  one  of  the  most  whimsically  incongruous  figures  in 
the  Government  ranks.  Twentieth-century  Liberalism 
wears  a  somewhat  drab  and  serious  aspect,  but  this  ultra- 
fashionable  example  of  gilded  youth  would  have  been 
in  his  place  among  the  votaries  of  Charles  James  Fox. 
The  climax  of  his  incongruity  was  a  vehement  and  rather 
antiquated  Protestantism  ;  he  was,  for  instance,  among 
the  few  who  opposed  the  alteration  of  the  Coronation 
oath  to  a  formula  less  offensive  to  Catholics.  Nobody 
doubted  that  his  Cornish  constituents  would  endorse 
whatever  he  did,  for  the  House  held  few  more  popular 
human  beings,  but  no  one  took  him  very  seriously  as  a 
politician.  This  particular  view  of  his  certainly  made 
no  breach  between  him  and  his  inseparable  associate, 
Mr.  Neil  Primrose,  who,  as  time  went  on,  took  as  strong 
a  line  against  Ulster's  claims  as  Agar-Robartes  did  for 


THE   HOME   RULE  BILL  OF   1912  69 

them. — Sunt  lacrimce  rerum.  I  remember  vividly  in 
August  1914  the  sudden  apparition  of  this  pair,  side 
by  side  as  always,  in  their  familiar  place  below  the  gang- 
way, but  in  quite  unfamiliar  guise,  for  khald  was  still 
new  to  the  benches.  The  two  brilliant  lads — for  they 
were  little  more — have  gone  now,  swept  into  the  abyss 
of  war's  wreckage  ;  the  controversy  which  divided  them 
remains,  virulent  as  ever. 

Agar-Robartes  stuck  to  his  guns  and  voted  against 
the  Bill  henceforward  ;  the  other  Liberals  who  supported 
him  were  ultimately  brought  into  the  Government  lobby. 
What  had  really  mattered  was  Mr.  Churchill's  speech  on 
the  Second  Reading.  Captain  Pirrie,  one  of  Redmond's 
few  closely  attached  friends  outside  the  Irish  party, 
bound,  I  think,  far  more  in  affection  to  the  Irish  leader 
than  to  his  own  chiefs,  complained  angrily  of  the  Govern- 
ment's evasive  reticence.  This  brought  up  the  Prime 
Minister,  whose  speech  was  brief  and  direct : 

"  This  amendment  proceeds  on  an  assumption  which 
I  believe  is  radically  false,  namely,  that  you  can  split 
Ireland  into  parts.  You  can  no  more  spUt  Ireland  into 
parts  than  you  can  split  England  or  Scotland  into  parts." 

When  Sir  Edward  Carson  had  spoken,  the  Ulster  leader's 
speech  enabled  Redmond  to  point  out  that  Ulstermen 
refused  to  accept  this  proposal  as  a  means  by  which 
Ulster  might  be  reconciled  to  Home  Rule,  but  were  ready 
to  vote  for  it  simply  as  a  wrecking  amendment.  General 
opinion  on  both  sides  of  the  House  agreed  that  the  amend- 
ment made  the  Bill  impossible  ;  and  the  majority  held 
that  therefore  Ulster  must  give  way.  Ulster,  on  the 
other  hand,  held  that  therefore  there  must  be  no  Home 
Rule  Bill.  But  there  was  a  Liberal  element  evidently 
not  convinced  that  Home  Rule  might  not  be  possible 
with  Ulster  excluded.  Mr.  Birrell  admitted  that  the 
plan  of  segregating  a  portion  had  been  considered,  but 
had  been  rejected,  on  the  merits,  as  unworkable.  Still 
he  professed  himself  open  to  conviction.     The  argument 


70  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

which  Mr.  Bonar  Law  decided  to  use  was  a  threat. 
Government  are  saying  to  the  people  of  Ulster,  he  said, 
"  Convince  us  that  you  are  in  earnest,  show  us  that  you 
will  fight,  and  we  will  yield  to  you  as  we  have  yielded 
to  everybody  else."  Captain  Craig,  following,  said  that 
the  Prime  IMinister  anticipated  that  Ulster's  objection 
would  after  a  few  years  be  merely  a  ripple  on  the  surface. 
"  If  the  right  honourable  gentleman  has  challenged  this 
part  of  his  Majesty's  dominions  to  civil  war,  we  accept 
the  challenge." 

This  temper  soon  had  ugly  expression.  On  June  29th 
an  excursion  party  of  the  Ancient  Order  of  Hibernians 
(the  Roman  Catholic  counterpart  to  the  Orange  Order) 
met  with  another  excursion  party  of  Protestants,  mainly 
Sunday-school  children,  at  a  place  called  Castledawson. 
Taunts  were  exchanged  and  one  of  the  Hibernians  tried 
to  snatch  a  flag  from  the  other  procession  ;  so  a  dis- 
turbance began  in  which  some  of  the  children  were  hurt 
and  many  frightened.  This  discreditable  incident  was 
magnified  with  all  the  rancour  of  partisanship — as  in 
the  state  of  feeling  must  have  been  expected.  But  the 
reprisals  were  startling.  All  Catholics  were  driven  out 
of  the  Belfast  shipyards  ;  many  were  injured,  and  over 
two  thousand  men  were  still  deprived  of  work  on  July 
12th,  when  the  Unionist  party  held  a  great  meeting  at 
Blenheim.  Mr.  Bonar  Law,  facing  for  the  first  time  a 
vast  typical  gathering  of  his  supporters,  said  that,  on 
a  previous  occasion,  when  speaking  as  little  more  than 
a  private  member  of  Parliament,  he  had  counselled  action 
outside  constitutional  limits.  Now,  he  emphasized  it 
that  he  took  the  same  attitude  as  leader  of  the  Unionist 
party. 

"  We  shall  use  any  means — whatever  means  seem  to 
us  to  be  most  likely  to  be  effective — any  means  to  deprive 
them  "  (the  Government)  "  of  the  power  they  have  usurped 
and  to  compel  them  to  face  the  people  whom  they  have 
deceived.     The  Home  Rule  Bill  in  spite  of  us  may  go 


THE   HOME   RULE   BILL   OF    1912  71 

through  the  House  of  Commons.  There  are  things 
stronger  than  parliamentary  majorities.  I  can  imagine 
no  length  of  resistance  to  which  Ulster  will  go  in  which 
I  shall  not  be  ready  to  support  them,  and  in  which  they 
will  not  be  supported  by  the  overwhelming  majority  of 
the  British  people." 

Sir  Edward  Carson  said  on  behalf  of  Ulster  : 

"  It  will  be  our  duty  shortly  to  take  such  steps — and, 
indeed,  they  are  already  being  taken — as  will  perfect 
our  arrangements  for  making  Home  Rule  absolutely 
impossible.  We  will  shortly  challenge  the  Government 
to  interfere  with  us  if  they  dare.  We  will  do  this  regard- 
less of  consequences,  of  all  personal  loss  and  inconvenience. 
They  may  tell  us,  if  they  like,  that  this  is  treason." 

Well  might  Mr.  Bonar  Law  say  in  returning  thanks 
that  this  day  "  would  be  a  turning-point  in  their  political 
history." 

Moderate  opinion  was  by  no  means  glad  to  have 
reached  this  turning-point,  and  The  Times  rebuked  Mr. 
Law  for  his  violence.  But,  tactically,  the  Unionists 
were  right  :  they  had  a  Government  indisposed  to  action 
and  they  made  the  most  of  their  opportunity.  Mr. 
Churchill  again  took  up  the  conduct  of  the  controversy, 
and  in  the  recess  proceeded  to  outline  a  policy  which 
he  described  as  federal  devolution.  The  Prime  Minister 
had  said  you  could  no  more  split  Ireland  into  parts  than 
England  or  Scotland.  But  Mr.  Churchill  argued  that, 
in  the  interest  of  efficiency,  England  must  be  divided 
into  provincial  units  with  separate  assemblies  ;  that 
Lancashire,  for  instance,  had  on  many  matters  a  very 
different  outlook  from  that  of  Yorkshire.  He  did  not 
draw  the  conclusion  ;  but  it  w^as  not  difficult  to  infer 
that  Mr.  Churchill  was  at  least  as  ready  to  give  separate 
rights  to  Ulster  as  to  any  group  of  English  counties,  and 
was  equally  ready  to  pitch  overboard  the  Prime  Minister's 
argument  for  refusing  partition  in  Ireland. 

In  the  meantime  Ulster's  preparations  continued.     It 


72  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

was  indicated  that  they  would  bear  a  religious  character, 
and  the  Protestant  Churches  were  deeply  involved.  The 
proposal  of  a  Covenant  was  made  public  in  August,  though 
the  actual  signing  of  it  was  deferred  to  "  Ulster  Day," 
September  28th.  Sir  Edward  Carson  was  provided  with 
a  guard  carrying  swords  and  wooden  rifles,  and  in  one 
instance  dummy  cannon  made  a  feature  of  the  pageant. 
These  things  excited  a  good  deal  of  derision,  and  the 
language  of  the  Covenant  was  held  to  be  only  "  hypo- 
thetical treason."      The  main  words  were  : 

"  We  stand  by  one  another  in  defending  for  ourselves 
and  our  children  our  cherished  position  of  equal  citizen- 
ship in  the  United  Kingdom  and  in  using  all  means  which 
may  be  found  necessary  to  defeat  the  present  conspiracy 
to  set  up  a  Home  Rule  Parliament  in  Ireland." 

The  Covenant  in  that  committed  the  signatories  to 
no  breach  of  the  law  ;  it  was  only  a  pledge  to  refuse  to 
recognize  the  authority  of  a  Parliament  not  yet  in  being. 
All  Ulster's  proceedings  might  so  far  be  dismissed,  as 
the  Attorney-General,  Mr.  Rufus  Isaacs,  dismissed  them, 
as  being  "  a  demonstration  admirably  stage-managed, 
and  led  by  one  of  great  histrionic  gifts."  The  threats 
of  the  use  of  force,  said  tlie  Attorney-General,  would  not 
turn  them  aside  by  a  hair's-breadth.  Mr.  Asquith, 
equally  vigorous  in  his  speech,  was  less  decisive  in  his 
conclusions.  Speaking  at  Ladybank  on  October  6th, 
he  denounced  "  the  reckless  rodomontade  of  Blenheim, 
which  furnishes  forth  the  complete  grammar  of  anarchy." 
But  he  was  careful  to  point  out  that  there  was  no 
demand  for  separate  treatment  for  Ulster,  and  that  Irish 
Unionists  were  simply  refusing  to  consent  to  Home 
Rule  under  any  conditions.  He  refrained  from  saying 
how  a  demand  for  separate  treatment  of  Ulster  would 
be   dealt   with   if  it  were  made. 

When  Parliament  resumed  its  sittings,  in  a  temper 
much  heated  by  all  the  challenge  and  controversy  of  the 
recess,   Mr.    Lloyd  George  pushed  tliis  line  of  argument 


THE   HOME   RULE   BILL  OF    1912  73 

a  shade  further.  He  argued  that  Sir  Edward  Carson 
himself  persisted  in  treating  Ireland  as  a  unit, 

"  Until  Ulster  departs  from  that  position  there  is  no 
case.  Ulster  has  a  right  to  claim  a  hearing  for  separate 
treatment ;  she  has  no  right  to  say,  '  Because  we  do 
not  want  Home  Rule  ourselves  the  majority  of  Irishmen 
are  not  to  have  Home  Rule.'  " 

Yet  upon  the  balance  of  events,  Unionists  were  probably 
disappointed.  A  very  strong  British  feeling  against  Sir 
Edward  Carson  and  his  Belfast  following  had  been  gener- 
ated by  the  expulsion  of  Catholics  from  the  shipyards 
and  in  general  by  the  advocacy  of  civil  war.  In  October 
1912  several  notable  men  who  had  previously  counted 
as  Unionists — Sir  Arthur  Conan  Doyle,  Sir  Frederick 
Pollock,  Sir  J.  West-Ridgway — all  declared  for  Home  Rule. 
Exasperation  against  the  incidence  of  the  new  Insurance 
Act  lost  the  Government  votes  at  every  by-election  ;  but 
the  Irish  cause  on  the  whole  gained  ground,  and  the 
chief  cause  of  that  advance  was  the  respect  universally 
felt  for  Redmond's  personality  and  leadership.  On 
November  22nd  he  attended  a  huge  meeting  of  the 
National  Liberal  Federation  at  Nottingham  along  with 
the  Prime  Minister  and  received  a  wonderful  welcome. 
The  step  was  novel.  Never  since  Parnell's  w^ork  began 
had  the  leader  of  the  Irish  people  stood  on  the  same 
platform  in  Great  Britain  with  the  leader  of  any  English 
party.  It  was,  however,  the  return  of  a  compliment, 
for  Mr.  Asquith  had  come  to  Dublin  in  the  summer  and 
there  spoken  along  with  the  Irish  leader.  Moreover,  a 
recent  incident  had  showTi  how  necessary  it  was  to 
maintain  the  closest  co-operation  ;  a  snap  division  on 
November  11th  had  inflicted  defeat  on  the  Govern- 
ment and  occasioned  loss  of  perhaps  a  fortnight's 
parliamentary  time. 

But  in  the  very  act  of  tlius  strengthening  his  hold 
on  the  British  electorate,  Redmond  gave  ground  to  those 
in  Ireland  who  desired  to  represent  him  as  a  mere  tool 


74  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

of  the  Liberal  party,  a  pawn  in  Mr.  Asquith's  game. 
Foreseeing  this  evil  did  not  help  to  combat  it,  and  on  the 
whole  it  was  Redmond's  inclination  to  take  a  sanguine 
view  of  his  countr5'''s  good  sense  and  generosity. 

The  Committee  stage  of  discussion  lasted  beyond  the 
end  of  the  year.  On  the  finance  arrangements  Redmond 
had  to  face  fierce  opposition  from  Mr.  O'Brien's  party, 
which  was  endorsed  by  the  Irish  Council  of  County 
Councils.  Here  difficulties  were  inevitable,  and  attack 
was  easy  either  for  the  Unionists,  who  pressed  the  argu- 
ment that  Ireland  was  to  be  started  on  its  career  of  self- 
government  with  a  subsidy  of  some  two  millions  per 
annum  from  Great  Britain,  or  for  the  O'Brienites,  who 
urged  that  the  country  was  already  overtaxed  in  pro- 
portion to  its  resources,  that  it  needed  large  expenditure 
for  development,  and  that  the  possible  budget  indicated 
by  the  Bill  left  no  serious  possibility  for  reducing  taxes 
or  for  undertaking  even  necessary  expenditure.  Redmond, 
on  the  other  hand,  was  bound  to  conciliate  the  vested 
interests  of  civil  servants,  officials  in  all  degrees,  and  the 
immense  police  force.  Retrenchment  on  the  vast  area 
of  unproductive  expenditure  which  Castle  government 
had  created  could  only  be  hoped  for  at  a  very  distant 
date.  He  could  not  therefore  promise  substantial 
economy  ;  nor  could  he  argue  for  a  further  increase  of 
subsidy  without  playing  into  the  Tories'  hands.  On  all 
this  detail  of  the  measure,  the  attack  in  debate  was  bound 
to  be  very  powerful. 

So  far  as  Great  Britain  was  concerned,  the  reply  of 
Home  Rulers  was  tolerably  effective.  In  1886  it  had 
been  feasible  to  propose  Home  Rule  with  an  Imperial 
contribution  of  two  and  a  half  millions.  By  1893  the 
possible  margin  had  dropped  heavily,  and  Mr.  Gladstone 
had  foretold  that  within  fifteen  years  Ireland  would  absorb 
more  money  for  purely  Irish  services  than  Irish  taxation 
produced.  This  prophecy  had  been  fulfilled  to  the  letter, 
and   everyone   saw   that   to   continue   the   Union   meant 


THE   HOME  RULE   BILL  OF   1912  75 

increasing  this  charge  automatically.  It  was  better  to 
cut  the  loss  and  at  least  say  that  it  should  not  exceed 
a  fixed  figure. 

But  in  Ireland  men  dwelt  always  on  the  Report  of 
the  Financial  Relations  Commission,  which  had  repre- 
sented the  balance  as  heavily  against  England  and  the 
account  for  overtaxation  of  the  poorer  country  as  reach- 
ing three  hundred  millions.  No  man  quoted  this  docu- 
ment oftener  than  Redmond,  and  none  was  a  firmer 
believer  in  its  justification.  But  he  realized,  as  his 
countrymen  did  not,  that  such  a  claim  could  never  hope 
for  cash  settlement,  that  its  value  was  as  an  argument 
for  the  concession  of  freedom  upon  generous  terms.  How 
could  he  urge  that  the  terms  proposed  were  ungenerous, 
when  Great  Britain  offered  to  pay  the  cost  of  all  Irish 
services — amounting  to  a  million  and  a  half  more  than 
Irish  revenue — and  to  provide  over  and  above  this  a 
yearly  grant  of  half  a  million,  dropping  gradually,  it  is 
true,  but  still  remaining  at  a  subsidy  of  two  hundred 
thousand  a  year  so  long  as  the  finance  arrangements 
of  the  Bill  lasted  ? 

Nevertheless,  these  arrangements  were  bad  ones,  and 
this  was  where  the  Bill  was  most  vulnerable  on 
its  merits  ;  for  self-government  without  the  control 
of  taxation  and  expenditure  is  at  best  an  unhopeful 
experiment. 

But  in  the  public  mind  at  large  only  one  difficulty 
bulked  big,  and  that  was  Ulster.  Men  on  both  sides 
began  to  be  uneasy  about  the  consequences  of  what 
was  happening,  and  this  temper  reflected  itself  in  the 
House.  On  New  Year's  Day  1913,  at  the  beginning  of 
the  Report  stage.  Sir  Edward  Carson  moved  the  exclu- 
sion of  the  province  of  Ulster.  His  speech  was  in  a  new 
tone  of  studied  conciliation.  But,  as  the  Prime  Minister 
immediately  made  clear,  there  was  no  offer  that  if  this 
concession  were  made  opposition  would  cease.  It  was 
merely    recommended   as    the    sole    alternative   to    civil 


76  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

war.     Redmond,  in  following,  let  fall  an  obiter  dictum  on 
the  position  of  the  Irish  controversy  : 

"  No  one  who  observes  the  current  of  popular  opinion 
in  this  country  can  doubt  for  one  instant  that  if  this 
opposition  from  the  north-east  corner  of  Ulster  did  not 
exist,  Home  Rule  would  go  through  to-morrow  as  an 
agreed  Bill." 

For  this  reason,  he  said,  he  would  go  almost  any  length 
within  certain  well-defined  limits  to  meet  that  section 
of  his  fellow-countrymen.  His  conditions  were,  first, 
that  the  proposal  must  be  a  genuine  one,  not  put  forward 
as  a  piece  of  tactics  to  wreck  the  Bill,  but  frankly  as 
part  of  a  general  settlement  of  the  Home  Rule  question  ; 
secondly,  that  it  must  be  of  reasonable  character ;  and 
thirdly,  not  inconsistent  with  the  fundamental  principle 
of  national  self-government.  Ulster's  present  proposal,  if 
accepted,  carried  with  it  no  promise  of  a  settlement ; 
it  was  unreasonable  as  proposing  to  strike  out  of  Ireland 
five  counties  with  Nationalist  majorities.  But  finally, 
on  a  broader  ground,  it  destroyed  the  national  right 
of  Ireland. 

"  Ireland  for  us  is  one  entity.  It  is  one  land.  Tyrone 
and  Tyrconnell  are  as  much  a  part  of  Ireland  as  Munster 
or  Connaught.  Some  of  the  most  glorious  chapters  con- 
nected with  our  national  struggle  have  been  associated 
Viith  Ulster — aye,  and  with  the  Protestants  of  Ulster 
— and  I  declare  here  to-day,  as  a  Catholic  Irishman, 
notwithstanding  all  the  bitterness  of  the  past,  that  I  am 
as  proud  of  Derry  as  of  Limerick.  Our  ideal  in  this 
movement  is  a  self-governing  Ireland  in  the  future,  when 
all  her  sons  of  all  races  and  creeds  within  her  shores  will 
bring  their  tribute,  great  or  small,  to  the  great  total  of 
national  enterprise,  national  statesmanship,  and  national 
happiness.  Men  may  deride  that  ideal  ;  they  may  say 
that  it  is  a  futile  and  unreliable  ideal,  but  they  cannot 
call  it  an  ignoble  one.  It  is  an  ideal  that  we,  at  any 
rate,  will  cling  to,  and  because  we  cling  to  it,  and  because 


THE   HOME   RULE  BILL  OF   1912  77 

it  is  there,  embedded  in  our  hearts  and  natures,  it  is  an 
absolute  bar  to  such  a  proposal  as  this  amendment  makes, 
a  proposal  which  would  create  for  all  times  a  sharp,  eternal 
dividing  line  between  Irish  Catholics  and  Irish  Protestants, 
and  a  measure  which  would  for  all  time  mean  the  partition 
and  disintegration  of  our  nation.  To  that  we  as  Irish 
Nationalists  can  never  submit." 

Later  in  the  debate,  Mr.  Bonar  Law  admitted  quite 
frankly  the  argument  against  treating  all  Ulster  as 
Unionist,  and  he  proceeded  to  suggest  that  any  county 
in  Ulster  might  be  given  power  to  decide  whether  or 
not  it  should  come  into  the  new  Parliament.  It  was 
plain,  however,  and  Mr.  Churchill  made  it  plainer,  that 
the  Unionist  loader  did  not  speak  for  Ulster  ;  Ulster's 
intention  was  still  to  use  its  own  opposition  to  Home 
Rule  as  a  bar  to  self-government  for  the  whole  of  Ireland. 

Equally  was  it  plain  that  the  pl6biscite  by  counties 
would  not  be  unacceptable  to  Mr.  Churchill. 

The  proposal  for  the  exclusion  of  the  entire  province 
was  defeated  by  a  majority  of  97  and  the  Third  Reading 
was  carried  by  110.  A  few  days  later  the  city  of  Derry 
returned  a  Home  Ruler,  and  the  Ulster  representation 
became  seventeen  for  the  Bill  and  sixteen  against.  This 
dramatic  change  produced  a  considerable  effect  on  British 
opinion.  Redmond,  speaking  at  a  luncheon  given  to 
the  winner,  Mr.  Hogg,  indicated  the  lines  on  which  he 
was  disposed  to  bargain.  He  would  be  willing  to  give 
Ulster  more  than  its  proportional  share  of  representation 
in  the  Irish  Parliament. 

The  debate  in  the  House  of  Lords  was  marked  by  certain 
speeches  which  showed  that  public  opinion  had  moved 
considerably.  Lord  Dunraven  declared  for  the  Second 
Reading,  though  pressing  all  the  line  of  objection  to  the 
Bill  which  had  been  taken  by  Mr.  O'Brien  and  his  party. 
He  heaped  scorn  also  as  an  Irishman  upon  *'  this 
absurd  theory  of  two  nations  which  is  only  invented  to 
make    discord  where  accord  would  naturally  be."     Lord 


78  JOHN   REDMOND'S   LAST   YEARS 

MacDonnell,  whose  administrative  experience  could  no 
more  be  questioned  than  his  genius  for  administration, 
held  that  though  amendment  was  needed  the  framework 
of  the  Bill  was  good,  and  that  urgent  necessity  existed 
for  the  change  to  self-government.  He  alluded  to  the 
opinion  expressed  by  Mr.  Balfour  in  1905,  that  the  proper 
y>"ay  of  reforming  Dublin  Castle  vras  by  increasing  the 
power  of  the  Chief  Secretary  and  his  Under-Secretary, 
and  thereby  getting  a  stronger  grip  on  the  various 
departments  of  the  "  complicated  system  "  prevailing. 
"I  thought  so  too,"  said  Lord  MacDonnell,  who  in  1905 
as  Under-Secretary  had  tried  his  hand  at  this  reform. 
"  It  was  one  of  the  illusions  that  I  took  with  me  to  Ireland 
twenty  years  ago — but  I  am  now  a  wiser  man.  .  .  .  My 
observation  of  the  Boards  had  convinced  me  before  I 
left  Ireland  that  no  scheme  of  administrative  reform 
which  depends  on  bureaucratic  organization  for  its  success, 
or  which  has  not  behind  it  a  popular  backing,  has  the 
least  chance  of  success  in  an  attempt  to  establish  in 
Ireland  a  government  that  is  satisfactory  to  the  Imperial 
Parliament  or  acceptable  to  the  Irish  people." — This  was 
a  repudiation  of  the  Irish  Council  Bill  of  1907  by  its  main 
author. 

Lord  Grey,  a  vivid  and  attractive  personality,  declared 
strongly  for  "  such  a  measure  of  Home  Rule  as  will  give 
the  Irish  people  power  to  manage  their  own  domestic 
affairs."  It  was  a  conviction  that  had  been  forced  upon 
him  by  his  experience  of  Greater  Britain.  "  Practically 
every  American,  every  Canadian,  every  Australian  is  a 
Home  Ruler."  But  the  settlement  must  proceed  upon 
federal  lines  ;  his  ideal  for  Ireland  was  the  provincial 
status  of  Ontario  or  Quebec,  linked  federally  to  a  central 
parliament  at  Westminster. 

The  most  significant  speech,  however,  came  from  the 
Archbishop  of  York.  Disclaiming  all  party  allegiance. 
Dr.  Lang  claimed  to  express  "  the  opinions  of  a  very 
large  number  of  fair-minded  citizens."     He  admitted  that 


THE   HOME   RULE   BILL   OF    1912  79 

there  was  an  Irish  problem,  which  could  not  be  solved 
by  "  a  policy  however  generous  of  promoting  the  economic 
welfare  of  Ireland."  "  Some  measure  of  Home  Rule  is 
necessary  not  only  to  meet  the  needs  of  Ireland 
but  the  needs  of  the  Imperial  Parliament."  This  Bill, 
however,  in  his  opinion,  was  ill-adapted  to  the  latter 
purpose.  It  would  be  a  block  rather  than  a  relief  to 
the  congestion  of  business.  But  these  objections  were 
"  abstract  and  academic  "  in  face  of  the  real  govern- 
ing  fact. 

"  The  figure  of  Ulster,  grim,  determined,  menacing, 
dominates  the  scene.  .  .  .  We  may  not  like  it.  Frankly, 
I  do  not  like  it.  It  carries  marks  of  religious  and  racial 
bitterness  and  suspicion.  It  uses  language  about  dis- 
obedience to  the  law  which  must  provoke  disquiet  and 
dislike  in  the  minds  of  all  who  care  for  the  good  govern- 
ment of  the  country.  I  am  not  competent,  because  I 
have  not  shared  in  the  experience  of  the  history  of  the 
Ulster  people,  to  decide  whether  or  not  their  fears  are 
groundless.  All  these  tilings  seem  to  me  to  be  beside 
the  point.  If  Ulster  means  to  do  what  it  says,  then  the 
results  are  certainly  such  as  no  citizen  can  contemplate 
without  grave  concern.  ...  I  admit,  everyone  must 
admit,  that  there  are  circumstances  in  which  a  Govern- 
ment is  entitled  and  bound  to  run  this  kind  of  risk.  At 
the  present  time  I  think  we  all  feel  that  there  is  a  call 
upon  Governments  to  stiffen  rather  than  to  slacken 
their  determination  in  the  presence  of  threats  of  dis- 
obedience or  disorder.  I  will  go  further  and  admit  that 
there  is  one  condition  which  would  justify  in  my  mind 
His  Majesty's  Government  in  running  the  risk  of  the 
forcible  coercion  of  Ulster.  That  condition  is  that  they 
should  have  received  from  the  people  of  this  country 
an  authority,  clear  and  explicit,  to  undertake  that  risk. 
It  is  perfectly  true  that  the  Prime  Minister  gave  notice 
that  if  his  party  were  returned  to  power  they  would  be 
free  to  raise  again  the  question  of  Homo  Rule,  but  there 


80  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

is  a  great  difference  between  the  abstract  question  of 
Home  Rule  and  a  concrete  Home  Rule  Bill." 

That  speech  undoubtedly  represented  the  temper  pre- 
vailing in  the  class  of  balancing  electors  which  is  so  large 
in  England.  Some  of  us  who  read  it  at  the  time  recog- 
nized how  far  the  long  struggle  for  autonomy  had  pre- 
vailed, but  also  how  strong  were  the  forces  which  no 
argument  could  reach.  Men  like  Dr.  Lang  might  be 
offended,  even  shocked  by  the  action  of  those  who  claimed 
to  be  England's  garrison  in  Ireland  ;  but  they  would 
be  very  slow  to  use  force  against  such  a  section,  although 
quite  ready  to  justify  coercion  of  the  Irish  majority. 
Yet  what  impressed  Redmond  was  the  advance  made, 
rather  than  the  revelation  of  what  resistance  remained. 
He  had  been  more  than  thirty  years  an  advocate  of 
Ireland's  cause  ;  and  now  by  the  spokesman  of  the  im- 
partial educated  mind  of  England  the  justice  of  that 
cause  was  admitted.  The  argument  that  a  general 
election  was  necessary,  or  would  bo  efficacious  in  solving 
the  problem,  was  one  with  which  he  felt  well  able  to 
contend.  In  that  speech  the  Archbishop  of  York  admitted 
his  impression  that  in  by-elections  there  had  been  "  much 
more  of  Food  Taxes  and  the  Insurance  Act  than  of  Home 
Rule." 

On  the  other  hand,  for  Ulster  such  a  speech  had  the 
plainest  possible  moral :  Ulster's  game  was  to  become 
more  grim,  more  determined,  more  menacing.  The 
Home  Rule  controversy  had  now  resolved  itself  into 
a  question  whether  Ulster  really  meant  business.  Sir 
Edward  Carson  set  himself  to  make  that  plain  beyond 
yea  or  nay. 

In  a  speech  delivered  in  Belfast,  at  the  opening  of  a 
new  drill  hall,  he  asked  and  answered  the  question,  "  Why 
are  we  drilling  ?  "  He  and  his  colleagues  did  not  recog- 
nize the  Parliament  Act,  he  said  ;  a  law  passed  under  it 
would  be  only  an  act  of  usurpation,  a  breach  of  right. 
*'  We  seek  nothing  but  the  elementary  right  implanted 


THE   HOME   RULE   BILL  OF   1912  81 

in    every    man :    the    right,    if    you    are    attacked,     to 
defend    yourself." 

Ulster  was  going  to  stand  by  its  Covenant. 

"  When  we  talk  of  force,  we  use  it,  if  we  are  driven 
to  use  it,  to  beat  back  those  who  will  dare  to  barter  away 
those  elementary  rights  of  citizenship  which  we  have 
inherited.  ...  Go  on,  be  ready,  you  are  our  great  army. 
Under  what  circumstances  you  have  to  come  into  action, 
you  must  leave  with  us.  There  are  matters  which  give 
us  grave  consideration  which  we  cannot  and  ought  not 
to  talk  about  in  public.  You  must  trust  us  that  we  will 
select  the  most  opportune  methods  of,  if  necessary,  taking 
on  ourselves  the  whole  government  of  the  community 
in  which  we  live.  I  know  a  great  deal  of  that  will  in- 
volve statutory  illegality,  but  it  will  also  involve  much 
righteousness." 

Some  of  the  questions  which  needed  grave  considera- 
tion were  suggested  by  happenings  that  followed  hard 
on  this  speech.  Much  ridicule  had  been  poured  on  the 
drillings  with  dummy  muskets.  Ulster  evidently  decided 
to  push  the  matter  a  step  further.  A  consignment  of 
one  thousand  rifles  with  bayonets,  in  cases  marked 
"  electrical  fittings,"  was  seized  at  Belfast  on  June  3,  1913. 
Other  incidents  of  the  same  nature  followed.  It  was 
argued,  by  those  who  sought  to  represent  the  whole 
campaign  as  an  elaborate  piece  of  bluff,  that  the  weapons 
were  useless  and  that  they  were  deliberately  sent  to 
be  seized.  A  feature  which  scarcely  bore  out  this  view 
was  that  one  consignment  was  addressed  to  the  Lord- 
Lieutenant  of  an  Ulster  county  who  was  also  an  officer 
in  the  Army.  A  justice  of  the  peace,  or  an  officer,  to 
whom  a  consignment  of  arms  had  been  sent  for  a  National- 
ist organization  would  have  been  ordered  to  clear  himself 
in  the  fullest  way  of  complicity,  and  even  of  sympathy, 
or  he  would  have  forfeited  his  commission.  The  noble- 
man involved,  however,  made  no  explanation,  and  was 
probably  never  officially  asked  to  do  so. 

7 


82  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

It  was  commonly  believed  in  the  House  of  Commons 
that  at  some  point,  if  not  repeatedly,  Government  con- 
sulted the  Irish  leader  or  his  principal  advisers  as  to 
whether  measures  of  repression  should  be  undertaken 
against  Ulster.  No  such  consultation  took  place.  But 
the  opinion  prevailing  among  the  leading  Nationalists 
was  no  doubt  known  or  inferred.  Mr.  Dillon,  speaking 
on  June  16,  1914,  when  the  danger-point  had  been  clearly 
reached,  justified  the  previous  abstinence  from  coercion. 

*'  I  have  held  the  view  from  the  beginning  that  it  would 
not  have  been  -wise  policy  for  a  Government  engaged  in 
the  great  work  of  the  political  emancipation  of  a  nation 
to  embark  on  a  career  of  coercion.  I  knew,  and  knew 
well,  all  the  difficulties  and  all  the  reproaches  that  the 
Government  would  have  to  face  if  they  abstained  from 
coercion.  It  is  a  difficult  and  almost  unprecedented 
course  for  a  Government  to  take,  and  it  is,  as  the 
Chief  Secretary  said,  a  courageous  one.  But  with  all 
its  difficulties  and  dangers  it  is  the  right  course.  We 
who  have  been  through  the  mill  know  what  the  effect 
of  coercion  is.  We  know  that  you  do  not  put  down 
Irishmen  by  coercion.  You  simply  embitter  them  and 
stiffen  their  backs." 

It  is  therefore  unquestionable  that  the  decision  to  do 
nothing  had  Redmond's  approval.  Whatever  may  be 
thought  of  that  policy,  one  factor  was  assuredly  under- 
estimated— the  effect  produced  on  the  public  mind  by 
the  spectacle  of  highly  placed  personages  defying  the 
law  and  defying  it  with  impunity.  It  was  possible  to 
argue  that  a  conviction  for  hypothetical  treason  would 
be  difficult  to  secure  and  that  failure  in  a  prosecution 
would  only  encourage  lawless  conduct.  But  Privy  Coun- 
cillors who  made  preparations  for  prospective  rebellion 
and  remained  Privy  Councillors  were  a  new  phenomenon. 
The  public  thought,  and  it  was  apparent  that  the  public 
would  think,  that  Government  was  afraid  to  quarrel 
with  what  is  called  Society.     Society  shared  that  belief 


THE   HOME   RULE   BILL   OF    1912  83 

and  began  to  extend  its  influence  in  a  new  direction. 
No  Government  can  permit  itself  to  be  defied  without 
general  relaxation  of  discipline,  and  the  effects  extended 
themselves  to  the  Army,  At  a  meeting  on  July  12th 
in  Ulster  a  telegram  was  read  out  from  "  Covenanters  " 
in  an  Ulster  regiment,  urging  "  No  surrender  until  ammu- 
nition is  spent  and  the  last  drop  of  blood."  In  his  speech 
on  that  occasion  Sir  Edward  Carson  declared  that  every 
day  brought  him  at  least  half  a  dozen  letters  from  British 
officers  asking  to  be  enrolled  among  the  future  defenders 
of  Ulster.  One  officer,  he  said,  having  signed  the  Cove- 
nant, was  ordered  to  send  in  his  papers  and  resign  his 
commission.  The  officer  refused  to  do  so,  and  after  a 
short  time  was  simply  told  to  resume  his  duty. 

"  We  have  assurance  from  the  Prime  Minister,"  said 
Sir  Edward  Carson,  "  that  the  forces  of  the  Crown  are 
not  to  be  used  against  Ulster.  Government  know  that 
they  could  not  rely  on  the  Army  to  shoot  down  the  people 
of  Ulster." 

Later  events  in  Ireland  furnished  a  grim  commentary 
as  to  what  the  Army  would  be  willing,  and  would  not 
be  willing,  to  do  in  the  way  of  shooting  down  in  Ireland  ; 
and  such  words  as  these  of  Sir  Edward  Carson  were 
destined  to  be  among  the  chief  difficulties  which  Redmond 
had  to  encounter  when  he  sought  to  lead  Ireland  into 
the  war. 

At  the  meeting  of  that  day,  delegates  were  present 
from  a  British  League  to  assist  Ulster  in  her  resistance. 
Behind  this  new  quasi-military  organization  stood  now  the 
whole  of  one  great  party.  Sir  Edward  Carson  trans- 
mitted a  message  from  Mr.  Bonar  Law  in  these  words  : 

"  Whatever  steps  we  may  feel  compelled  to  take, 
whether  they  be  constitutional,  or  in  the  long  run  whether 
they  be  unconstitutional,  we  will  have  the  whole  of  the 
Unionist  party  under  his  leadership  behind  us," 

Later  in  the  autumn,  on  the  first  anniversary  of  Ulster 
Day,  there  was  formally  announced  the  formation  of  an 


84  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

Ulster  Provisional  Government,  with  a  Military  Committee 
attached  to  it.  A  guarantee  fund  to  indemnify  all  who 
might  be  involved  in  damaging  consequences  was  set  on 
foot,  and  a  million  sterling  was  indicated  as  the  necessary 
amount  to  be  obtained. 

In  the  meantime  signs  of  distress  came  from  the  Liberal 
camp.  Mr.  Churchill,  in  speeches  to  his  constituents, 
renewed  the  suggestions  for  partition.  More  notable 
was  a  letter  from  Lord  Loreburn,  who  had  till  recently 
been  Lord  Chancellor,  and  who  was  known  as  a  steady 
and  outspoken  Home  Ruler.  He  appealed  in  The  Times 
of  September  11,  1913,  for  a  conference  between  parties 
on  the  Irish  difficulty.  Irish  Nationalist  opinion  grew 
profoundly  uneasy,  and  Redmond  at  Limerick  on  October 
12th  set  out  his  position  with  weighty  emphasis.  He 
referred  to  the  fact  that  during  the  summer  he  himself, 
assisted  by  Mr.  Devlin,  had  followed  Sir  Edward  Carson 
and  other  Ulster  speakers  from  place  to  place  through 
Great  Britain,  and  on  the  same  ground  had  stated  the 
case  for  Home  Rule.  He  claimed,  and  with  justice,  a 
triumphant  success  for  this  counter-campaign. 

**  The  argumentative  opposition  to  Home  Rule  is  dead, 
and  all  the  violent  language,  all  the  extravagant  action, 
all  the  bombastic  threats,  are  but  indications  that  the 
battle  is  over." 

Still,  he  was  too  old  a  politician,  he  said,  not  to  build 
a  bridge  of  gold  to  convenience  his  opponents'  retreat, 
provided  that  the  fruits  of  victory  were  not  flung  away. 
Mr.  Churchill  had  told  the  Ulstermen  that  there  was 
no  demand  they  could  make  which  would  not  be  matched, 
and  more  than  matched,  by  their  countrymen  and  the 
Liberal  party.     On  this  it  was  necessary  to  be  explicit. 

"  Irish  Nationalists  can  never  be  assenting  parties  to 
the  mutilation  of  the  Irish  nation  ;  Ireland  is  a  unit. 
It  is  true  that  within  the  bosom  of  a  nation  there  is 
room  for  diversities  of  the  treatment  of  government 
and  of  administration,  but  a  unit  Ireland  is  and  Ireland 


THE   HOME   RULE   BILL  OF    1912  85 

must  remain.  .  .  .  The    two-ritation  theory   is    to    us    an 
abomination  and  a  blasphemy." 

These  were  carefully  chosen  words,  and  they  iudicalod 
a  possible  acceptance  of  the  proposal  that  Ulster  should 
have  control  of  its  own  administration  in  regard  to  local 
affairs,  but  that  Irish  legislation  should  be  left  to  a  common 
parliament. 

This  plan  Sir  Edward  Grey  described  as  his  "  personal 
contribution  "  to  a  discussion  of  possibilities  which  had 
been  inaugurated  by  a  notable  speech  from  the  Prime 
Minister.     At   Ladybank,  on   October  25th,  Mr.  Asquith 
invited    "  interchange   of    views   and    suggestions,    free, 
frank,  and  without  prejudice."     Nothing,  however,  could 
be  accepted  which  did  not  conform  to  three  governing 
considerations.     First,    there    must    be    established    "  a 
subordinate  Irish  legislature  with  an  executive  responsible 
to   it  "  ;   secondly,   "  nothing  must   be   done  to   erect   a 
permanent  and   insuperable    bar  to   Irish   unity "  ;    and 
thirdly,  though  the  process  of  relieving  congestion  in  the 
Imperial  Parliament  could  not  be  fully  accomplished  by  the 
present   Bill,   Ireland  must  not  be   made  to   wait  till  a 
complete  scheme  of  decentralization  could  be  carried  out. 
The  second  of  these  conditions  was  plainly  the  most 
significant.     It  was  taken  to  mean  that  "  county  option  " 
— the  right  for  each  county  to  decide  whether  it  would 
come  under  a  Home  Rule  Government — would  not  create 
**  a    permanent    and   insuperable "    obstacle,    since    each 
county   could   be   given   the   opportunity   to    vote   itself 
in  at  any  time.     Redmond's  next  important  speech  in 
England  showed  by  its  emphasis  that  he  felt  a  danger. 
He  denounced  "  the  gigantic  game  of  bluff  and  black- 
mail "   which  was  in  progress.     The  proposed  exclusion 
of  Ulster  was  not  a  proposition  that  could  be  considered. 
It  would  bring  about,  he  thought,  the  ruin  of  Ulster's 
prosperity.     "  For    us   it    would    mean    the    nullification 
of  our  hopes  and  aspirations  for  the  future."     It  would 
stereotype  an  old  evil  in  the  region  where  it  still  existed. 


86  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

What  Ulster  really  feared,  he  said,  was  the  loss,  not  of 
freedom  or  prosperit}^,  but  of  Protestant  ascendancy. 

This  was  the  truth  ;  Protestant  ascendancy,  which  in 
his  boyhood  had  existed  throughout  all  Ireland,  was  in 
consequence  of  the  Irish  party's  work  dead  in  three 
provinces.  It  remained  and  must  remain  in  Ulster, 
where  Protestants  were  a  majority,  but  it  would  be 
qualified  if  that  region  came  under  the  control  of  a  parlia- 
ment elected  by  all  Ireland.  That  was  and  is  the  true 
reason  of  Ulster's  resistance  to  national  self-government. 
What  he  would  concede  and  what  he  would  reject,  Red- 
mond indicated  in  general  words  :  "  There  is  no  demand, 
however  extravagant  and  unreasonable  it  may  appear  to 
us,  that  we  are  not  ready  carefully  to  consider,  so  long 
as  it  is  consistent  with  the  principle  for  which  generations 
of  our  race  have  battled,  the  principle  of  a  settlement 
based  on  the  national  self-government  of  Ireland.  I 
shut  no  door  to  a  settlement  by  consent,  but  .  .  .  we 
will  not  be  intimidated  or  bullied  into  a  betrayal  of 
our  trust." 

It  was  noted  at  that  time  that  he  had  said  nothing 
to  rule  out  Sir  Edward  Grey's  proposal,  which  would 
have  left  the  local  majority  predominant  in  Ulster's  own 
affairs  ;  and  on  December  4th  Sir  Edward  Grey  spoke 
again,  showing  a  firmness  that  was  the  more  impressive 
because  of  his  habitual  moderation  of  tone.  One  thing, 
he  said,  was  worse  than  carrying  Home  Rule  by  force, 
and  that  would  be  the  abandonment  of  Home  Rule.  Two 
suggestions  had  been  made — a  proposal  for  the  temporary 
exclusion  of  Ulster  and  a  plan  for  giving  to  Ulster  admin- 
istrative autonomy.  Neither  had  been  received  by  Ulster 
"  in  a  spirit  which  seemed  likely  to  lead  to  a  settlement. 
.  .  .  Was  it  a  settlement  by  consent  they  wanted,  or 
was  their  aim  simply  the  destruction  of  the  Bill  ?  " 

This  emphasized  what  Redmond  had  said  a  few  days 
earlier  at  Birmingham,  when  he  declared  that  the  fight 
against  Home  Rule  was  not  an  honest  one,  that  its  real 


THE   HOME   RULE  BILL  OF   1912  87 

purpose  was  to  defeat  the  Parliament  Act  and  restore 
to  the  Tory  party  its  special  control  over  the  legislative 
machine. 

The  facts  were  plain  on  the  surface.  The  Tories 
clamoured  for  a  fresh  general  election,  urging  that  the 
electors  never  realized  that  the  Liberal  programme  in- 
volved civil  war.  But  to  concede  this  claim  indirectly 
defeated  the  Parliament  Act,  which  would  then  have 
broken  down  at  the  first  attempt  to  apply  it.  What 
added  to  the  insincerity  of  the  argument  was  Ulster's 
repeated  refusal  to  be  influenced  by  the  result  of  any 
election.  Under  no  circumstances,  speaker  after  speaker 
from  Ulster  declared,  would  they  submit  to  Home  Rule. 
The  prospect  of  civil  war  remained,  with  only  one  limi- 
tation. Mr.  Bonar  Law  undertook  that  if  a  general 
election  took  place  and  the  Liberals  again  came  back, 
the  British  Unionist  party  would  not  support  Ulster  in 
physical  resistance.  They  would,  however,  continue  to 
oppose  a  Home  Rule  Bill  by  aU  constitutional  means. 

Nevertheless,  the  English  disposition  to  compromise 
was  already  operating.  Mr.  Asquith  was  the  last  of 
mankind  to  make  a  quixotic  stand  for  principle,  and 
the  most  disposed  to  pride  himself  on  a  practical  recog- 
nition of  realities.  His  Government  was  in  rough  water. 
During  the  summer  Mr.  Lloyd  George's  transaction  in 
Marconi  shares  had  been  magnified  by  partisan  rancour 
into  a  crime.  Much  more  serious  was  the  split  with 
Labour,  which  led  to  the  loss  of  seat  after  seat  at  by- 
elections,  when  the  allied  forces  which  stood  behind  the 
Parliament  Act  attacked  each  other  and  let  the  Tories 
in.  The  Women's  Franchise  agitation  was  also  coming 
to  its  stormiest  point. 

Redmond's  part  was  one  of  extraordinary  difficulty. 
The  cause  for  which  he  stood  was  one  affecting  the  interests 
of  only  a  small  minority  of  the  total  electorate  concerned 
in  the  struggle  which  now  spread  over  both  islands.  The 
Irish  problem  belonged  in  reality  to  the  Victorian  era  ; 


88  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

those  in  the  British  electorate  whom  it  could  stir  to 
enthusiasm  were  stirred  by  a  memory,  not  by  a  new  gospel. 
Normally,  but  for  the  chance  of  Parnell's  overthrow,  it 
would  have  been  solved  in  Gladstone's  last  years.  For 
most  Liberals,  for  all  Labour  men,  the  fact  that  it  had 
passed  beyond  the  sphere  of  argument  meant  a  lack  of 
driving  force.  It  was  a  part  of  accepted  Liberal  ortho- 
doxy ;  minds  were  centred  rather  on  those  social  con- 
troversies in  which  Mr.  Lloyd  George  was  the  dominant 
figure,  and  upon  which  opinion  had  not  yet  crystallized. 

Further,  the  cry  of  Protestant  liberties  in  danger,  the 
cause  of  Protestants  who  conducted  their  arming  to  the 
accompaniment  of  hymns  and  prayer,  made  inevitably 
a  searching  appeal  to  the  feelings  of  an  island  kingdom 
where  the  prejudice  against  Roman  Catholics  is  more 
instinctive  than  anywhere  else  in  the  world.  Looking 
back  on  it  all,  I  marvel  not  at  the  difficulties  we  encoun- 
tered, but  at  the  success  with  which  we  surmounted 
them ;  and  the  great  element  in  that  success  was  Redmond's 
personality.  His  dignity,  his  noble  eloquence,  his  sin- 
cerity, and  the  large,  tolerant  nature  of  the  man,  won 
upon  the  public  imagination.  His  tact  was  unfailing. 
In  all  those  years,  under  the  most  envenomed  scrutiny, 
he  never  let  slip  a  word  that  could  be  used  to  our  dis- 
advantage. This  is  merely  a  negative  statement.  It  is 
truer  to  say  that  he  never  touched  the  question  without 
raising  it  to  the  scope  of  great  issues.  Nothing  petty, 
nothing  personal  came  into  his  discourse  ;  he  so  carried 
the  national  claim  of  Ireland  that  men  saw  in  it  at  once 
the  test  and  the  justification  of  democracy. 

That  is  why  the  Irish  cause,  instead  of  being  a  mill- 
stone round  the  neck  of  the  parliamentary  alUance,  was 
in  truth  a  living  cohesive  force.  But  in  order  to  keep 
it  so  it  must  be  pleaded,  not  as  a  question  for  Ireland 
only  but  for  the  democracy  of  Great  Britain  and,  in  a 
stiU  larger  sense,  for  the  Commonwealth  of  the  British 
Empire. 


THE   HOME  RULE   BILL   OF    1912  89 

Liberal  statesmen  in  their  desire  to  simplify  their  own 
task  underestimated  altogether  the  difficulty  which  their 
professed  short-cuts  to  the  goal — or  rather,  their  attempted 
circuits  round  obstacles — created  inevitably  for  the  Irish 
leader.  They  did  not  realize  that  his  genuine  feeling — 
based  on  knowledge — for  the  British  democracy  at  home, 
and  still  more  for  its  offshoots  overseas,  was  unshared 
by  his  countrymen,  still  aloof,  still  suspicious,  and  daily 
impressed  by  the  spectacle  of  those  who  most  paraded 
allegiance  to  British  Imperialism  professing  a  readiness 
to  tear  up  the  Constitution  rather  than  allow  freedom 
to  Ireland.  Liberal  statesmen  did  not  understand  that 
Redmond  could  only  justify  to  Ireland  the  part  which 
he  was  taking  if  he  won,  and  that  he  and  not  they  must 
be  the  judge  of  what  Ireland  would  consider  a  defeat. 
In  all  probability,  also,  they  overrated  his  power  and  that 
of  the  party  which  he  led.  They  did  not  guess  at  the 
potency  of  new  forces  which  only  in  these  months  began 
to  make  themselves  felt,  and  which  in  the  end,  breaking 
loose  from  Redmond's  control,  undid  his  work.  A  new 
phase  in  Irish  history  had  begun,  of  which  Sir  Edward 
Carson  was  the  chief  responsible  author. 


CHAPTER   IV 
THE   RIVAL  VOLUNTEER   FORCES 

THE  first  stir  of  a  new  movement  in  Nationalist 
Ireland  outside  the  old  political  lines  came  from 
Labour — from  Irish  Labour,  as  yet  unorganized  and 
terribly  in  need  of  organization.  On  August  26,  1913, 
a  strike  in  Dublin  began  under  the  leadership  of  Mr. 
Larkin.  It  had  all  the  violence  and  disorder  which  is 
characteristic  of  economic  struggles  where  Labour  has 
not  yet  learned  to  develop  its  strength  ;  it  opened  new 
cleavages  at  this  moment  when  national  union  was  most 
necessary  :  it  was  fought  with  the  passion  of  despair  by 
workers  whose  scale  of  pay  and  living  was  a  disgrace 
to  civilization  ;  and  after  five  months  it  was  not  settled 
but  scotched,  leaving  dark  embers  of  revolutionary  hate 
scattered  through  the  capital  of  Ireland. 

One  incident  showed  some  of  the  consequences  ready 
to  spring,  even  in  England  itself,  from  the  action  taken 
in  Ulster.  Mr.  Larkin  at  the  end  of  October  1913  was 
sentenced  to  six  months'  imprisonment  for  sedition  and 
inciting  to  disturbance.  A  fierce  outcry  ran  through 
the  Labour  world  in  Great  Britain  ;  by-elections  were 
in  progress,  and  Government  was  angrily  challenged  with 
having  one  law  for  the  rich  and  another  for  the  poor, 
one  law  for  Labour  and  another  for  the  Unionist  party. 
To  this  pressure  Government  yielded,  and  Mr.  Larkin 
was  liberated  after  a  few  days  in  jail. 

But  in  Ireland  more  formidable  symptoms  soon  made 
themselves  manifest.  Captain  J.  R.  White,  son  of  Sir 
George  White,  the  defender  of  Ladysmith,  was  a  soldier 
by   hereditary   instinct   and   had   won   the   Distinguished 

90 


THE   RIVAL  VOLUNTEER   FORCES  91 

Service  Order  in  South  Africa.  But  some  strain  in  his 
composition  answered  to  other  calls,  and  upon  Tolstoyan 
grounds  he  ceased  to  be  a  soldier,  without  ceasing  to  be 
a  natural  leader  of  men.  His  first  public  appearance 
was  at  a  meeting  in  London  in  support  of  Home  Rule 
addressed  by  a  number  of  prominent  persons  who  were 
not  Roman  Catholics,  But  his  interests  were  plainly 
not  so  much  Nationalist  as  broadly  humanitarian  ;  free- 
dom for  the  individual  soul  rather  than  for  the  nation 
was  his  object  :  and  he  suddenly  enrolled  himself  among 
Mr.  Larkin's  allies.  His  proposal  was  outlined  to  a  great 
assembly  of  the  strikers  gathered  in  front  of  Liberty 
Hall  :  Mr.  Larkin  set  it  out.  They  must  no  longer  be 
"  content  to  assemble  in  hopeless  haphazard  crowds  " 
but  must  "  agree  to  bring  themselves  under  the  influences 
of  an  ordered  and  sympathetic  discipline."  "  Labour  in 
its  own  defence  must  begin  to  train  itself  to  act  with  dis- 
ciplined courage  and  with  organized  and  concentrated 
force.  How  could  they  accomplish  this  ?  By  taking  a 
leaf  out  of  the  book  of  Carson.  If  Carson  had  permission 
to  train  his  braves  of  the  North  to  fight  against  the 
aspirations  of  the  Irish  people,  then  it  was  legitimate 
and  fair  for  Labour  to  organize  in  the  same  militant  way 
to  preserve  their  rights  and  to  ensure  that  if  they  were 
attacked  they  would  be  able  to  give  a  very  satisfactory 
account  of  themselves." 

Thus  began  in  a  small  sectional  manner  a  national 
movement  which  led  far  indeed.  Mr.  O'Cathasaigh, 
from  whose  Story  of  the  Irish  Citizen  Army  I  quote,  attri- 
butes the  failure  of  that  purely  Labour  organization 
chiefly  to  the  establishment  of  the  Irish  Volunteers. 

This  was  a  development  which  Redmond  on  his  part 
neither  willed  nor  approved,  yet  one  which  in  the  cir- 
cumstances was  inevitable.  Who  could  suppose  that 
the  formation  of  combatant  forces  would  remain  a  mono- 
poly of  any  party  ?  There  was  no  mistaking  the  weight 
which    a    hundred    thousand    Ulster    Volunteers,    drilled 


92  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

and  regimented,  threw  into  Sir  Edward  Carson's  advocacy. 
As  early  as  September  1913,  during  the  parliamentary 
recess,  Redmond  received  at  least  one  letter — and  possibly 
he  received  many — urging  him  to  raise  the  standard  of 
a  similar  force,  and  pointing  out  that  if  he  did  not  take 
this  course  it  might  be  taken  by  others  less  fit  to  guide 
it.  The  letter  of  which  I  speak  elicited  no  answer.  It 
was  never  his  habit  to  reply  to  inconvenient  communi- 
cations— a  policy  which  he  inherited  from  Parnell,  who 
held  that  nearly  every  letter  answered  itself  within  six 
months,  if  it  were  let  alone.  Certainly  in  this  case  it 
so  happened.  Long  before  six  months  were  up,  facts 
had  made  argument  superfluous. 

Wisdom  is  easy  after  the  event,  and  few  would  dispute 
now  that  the  constitutional  party  ought  either  to  have 
dissociated  itself  completely  from  the  appeal  to  force, 
or  to  have  launched  and  controlled  it  from  the  outset. 
Neither  of  these  lines  was  followed,  and  the  responsi- 
bility for  what  was  done  and  what  was  not  done  must 
lie  with  Redmond.  Yet,  as  I  read  it,  the  key  to  his 
policy  lay  in  a  dread,  not  of  war,  but  of  civil  war.  To 
arm  Irishmen  against  each  other  was  of  all  possible 
courses  to  him  the  most  hateful.  It  opened  a  vision  of 
fratricidal  strife,  of  an  Ireland  divided  against  itself  by 
new  and  bloody  memories. 

Moreover,  though  he  had,  as  the  world  came  to  know, 
soldiering  in  his  blood — though  the  call  to  war,  when 
he  counted  the  war  righteous,  stirred  what  was  deepest 
in  him — by  training  and  conviction  he  was  essentially 
a  constitutionalist :  he  realized  profoundly  how  strong 
were  the  forces  behind  constitutionalism  in  Great  Britain, 
how  impregnable  was  the  position  of  British  Ministers  if 
they  boldly  asserted  the  law  with  equality  as  between 
man  and  man.  Where  he  was  mistaken  was  in  his  esti- 
mate of  the  Government  with  which  he  had  to  deal,  and 
especially  of  Mr.  Asquith.  Speaking  to  his  constituents 
early   in  the  New  Year  of   1914  he  said,  "The  Prime 


THE  RIVAL  VOLUNTEER  FORCES  93 

Minister  is  as  firm  as  a  rock,  and  is,  I  believe,  the  strongest 
and  sanest  man  who  has  appeared  in  British  politics  in 
our  time."  The  verdict  of  history  might  have  borne 
out  this  judgment  had  Mr.  Asquith  never  been  forced 
to  face  extraordinary  times.  In  the  event,  it  was  Mr. 
Asquith's  lack  of  firmness  and  failure  in  strength  which 
drove  Redmond  into  belated  acceptance  of  a  policy 
modelled  on  Sir  Edward  Carson's. 

As  early  as  July  1913  the  demonstrations  in  Ulster 
led  to  discussion  of  a  countermove  among  young  men  in 
Dublin.  But  there  was  no  public  proposal,  until  at  the 
end  of  October  Professor  MacNeill,  Vice-President  of 
the  Gaelic  League,  published  an  article  in  the  League's 
official  organ  calling  on  Nationalist  Ireland  to  drill  and 
arm.  The  first  meeting  of  a  provisional  committee 
followed  a  few  days  later.  Support  was  asked  from  all 
sections  of  Nationalist  opinion  ;  but,  as  a  whole,  members 
of  the  United  Irish  League  and  of  the  Ancient  Order  of 
Hibernians,  who  constituted  the  bulk  of  Redmond's 
following,  refused  to  act.  Still,  about  a  third  of  the 
committee  were  supporters  of  the  parliamentary  party  ; 
they  included  Professor  Kettle,  who  was  from  1906  to 
1910  among  its  most  brilliant  members.  It  was,  however, 
significant  that  the  Lord  Mayor,  a  prominent  official 
Nationalist,  refused  the  use  of  the  Mansion  House  for 
a  meeting  at  which  it  was  proposed  to  start  the  enrolment 
of  Irish  Volunteers.  As  a  result,  the  venue  was  changed 
to  the  Rotunda,  and  so  great  enthusiasm  was  shown  that 
the  Rink  was  used  for  the  assembly.  Even  that  did  not 
suffice  for  half  the  gathering.  Three  overflow  meetings 
were  held,  and  four  thousand  men  are  said  to  have  been 
enrolled  that  evening. 

Yet  the  movement  did  not  spread  at  once  with  rapidity. 
By  the  end  of  December  recruits  only  amounted  to 
ten  thousand.  For  this  two  causes  were  answerable. 
The  first  was  the  honourable  refusal  of  the  committee 
to    allow    companies    to    be    enrolled    except    according 


94  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

to  locality.  They  would  have  no  sectional  companies 
of  Sinn  Fein  volunteers,  of  United  Irish  League  Volun- 
teers, of  Hibernian  Volunteers.  All  must  mix  equally 
in  the  ranks.  The  second  was  the  fear  of  most  National- 
ists that  by  joining  an  organization  with  which  the  national 
leader  was  not  identified  they  might  weaken  his  hand. 
This  operated,  although  the  declared  intention  of  the 
organization  was  to  strengthen  Redmond's  position. 
At  Limerick  in  January  Pearse  said  :  "In  the  Volunteer 
movement  we  are  going  to  give  Mr.  Redmond  a  weapon 
which  will  enable  him  to  enforce  the  demand  for  Home 
Rule." 

Briefly,  for  several  months  the  numbers  of  the  new 
force  did  not  show  that  the  whole  of  Nationalist  Ireland 
was  in  support  of  it.  Ireland  was  waiting  for  a  sign 
from  Redmond,  and  it  did  not  come.  The  events  which 
literally  drove  Irish  constitutional  Nationalists  into  fol- 
lo\ving  Ulster's  example  had  still  to  occur. 

There  was,  however,  a  wide  extension  of  the  cadres 
of  the  organization,  and  it  was  being  spread  by  men 
some  of  whom — like  Professor  MacNeill — dissented  from 
Redmond's  attitude  of  quiescence,  while  some  were 
general  opponents  of  the  whole  constitutional  policy. 
They  covered  the  country  with  committees,  recruited, 
it  is  true,  from  all  sections  of  Nationalist  Ireland,  But 
it  was  inevitable  that  the  element  who  distrusted  Red- 
mond, and  whose  distrust  he  reciprocated,  should  attain 
an  influence  out  of  all  proportion  to  its  following  in  the 
country. 

Government's  action — and  this  sentence  will  run  like 
a  refrain  through  the  rest  of  this  book — contributed 
largely  to  strengthen  the  extremists  and  to  weaken 
Redmond's  hold  on  the  people.  During  eleven  months 
the  Ulster  Volunteers  had  been  drilling,  had  been  import- 
ing arms,  and  no  step  was  taken  to  interfere.  Within 
ten  days  after  the  Irish  Volunteer  Force  began  to  be 
enrolled,   a    proclamation   (issued  on  December  4,    1913) 


THE   RIVAL  VOLUNTEER  FORCES  95 

prohibited  the  importation  of  military  arms  and  ammuni- 
tion into  Ireland,  A  system  of  search  was  instituted. 
But  the  Ulstermen  were  already  well  supplied.  Redmond 
was  blamed  for  not  forcing  the  withdrawal  of  the  pro- 
clamation. He  controlled  the  House  of  Commons,  it 
was  said.  This  was  the  line  of  argument  constantly 
taken  by  dissentient  Nationalists  ;  and  it  was  true  that 
he  could  at  any  moment  put  the  Government  out.  Critics 
did  not  stop  to  ask  for  whose  advantage  that  would  be. 
Government  by  issuing  this  proclamation  had  effected 
no  good :  they  had  embarrassed  their  chief  ally,  and 
they  had  laid  the  foundation  for  an  imposing  structure 
of  incidents  which  grew  with  pernicious  rapidity  into  a 
monumental  proof  that  law,  even  under  a  Liberal  admin- 
istration, has  one  aspect  for  Protestant  Ulster  and  quite 
another  for  the  rest  of  Ireland. 

But  in  England  at  the  beginning  of  the  fateful  year 
1914  the  Irish  Volunteers  had  not  yet  become  recognized 
as  a  factor  in  the  main  political  situation.  An  attitude 
of  mind  had  been  studiously  fostered  which  found  crude 
expression  soon  after  the  House  met.  One  of  the  Liberal 
party  was  arguing  that  Ulster  had  made  Home  Rule 
an  absolute  necessity,  because  Nationalists  would  have 
"  fourfold  justification  if  they  resisted  in  the  way  you 
have  taught  them  to  resist  the  Government  of  this  country 
in  maintaining  the  old  system."  "  They  have  not  the 
pluck,"  interjected  Captain  Craig,  the  most  prominent 
of  the  Ulster  members.  The  present  Lord  Chancellor, 
Mr.  F.  E.  Smith,  was  voluble  in  declarations  that  Nation- 
alists would  "  neither  fight  for  Home  Rule  nor  pay  for 
Home  Rule."  These  taunts  did  not  ease  Redmond's 
position,  especially  as  it  became  plain  that  Ulster's  threat 
of  violence  had  succeeded. 

Mr.  Asquith,  referring  to  the  "  conversations  "  between 
leaders  which  had  taken  place  during  the  winter,  said 
that  since  no  definite  agreement  had  been  reached  the 
Government  had  decided  to  reopen  the  matter  in  the 


96  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

HouBe.  This  meant,  as  Redmond  pointed  out  with 
some  asperity,  that  the  Prime  Minister  had  accepted 
responsibility  for  taking  the  initiative  in  making  pro- 
posals to  meet  objections  whose  reasonableness  he  did 
not  admit.  The  Opposition,  he  thought,  should  have 
been  left  to  put  forward  some  plan. 

Yet  Redmond's  attitude,  and  the  attitude  of  the 
House,  was  considerably  affected  by  an  unusual  speech 
which   had  been  delivered  by  the  Ulster  leader. 

Sir  Edward  Carson,  as  everyone  knows,  is  not  an  Ulster- 
man,  and  the  chief  of  many  advantages  which  Ulster 
gained  from  his  advocacy  was  that  Ulster's  case  was 
never  stated  to  Great  Britain  as  Ulstermen  themselves 
would  have  stated  it.  It  is  not  true  to  say  that  Ulster- 
men  by  habit  think  of  Ireland  as  consisting  of  two  nations, 
for  all  Ulstermen  traditionally  regard  themselves  as 
Irish  and  so  have  always  described  themselves  without 
qualification.  But  it  is  true  to  say  that  Ulster  Protes- 
tants have  regarded  Irish  Catholics  as  a  separate  and 
inferior  caste  of  Irishmen.  The  belief  has  been  ingrained 
into  them  that  as  Protestants  they  are  morally  and 
intellectually  superior  to  those  of  the  other  reUgion. 
Their  whole  political  attitude  is  determined  by  this  con- 
viction. They  refuse  to  come  under  a  Dublin  Parliament 
because  in  it  they  would  be  governed  by  a  majority  whom 
they  regard  as  their  inferiors.  It  is  in  their  deliberate 
view  natural  that  Roman  Catholics  should  submit  to  be 
controlled  by  Protestants,  unnatural  that  Protestants 
should  submit  to  be  controlled  by  Roman  Catholics. 

It  does  not  express  the  truth  to  say  that  Sir  Edward 
Carson  was  adroit  enough  to  avoid  putting  this  view  of 
the  case  to  the  electors  of  Great  Britain  or  to  the  House 
of  Commons.  Temperamentally  and  instinctively,  he 
did  not  share  it.  He  was  a  Southern  Irishman  who  at 
the  opening  of  his  life  held  himself,  as  not  one  Ulsterman 
in  a  thousand  does,  perfectly  free  to  make  up  his  mind 
for  or  against  the  maintenance  of  the  Union.     He  reached 


THE   RIVAL   VOLUNTEER  FORCES  07 

the  conclusion  not  only  that  Home  Rule  would  be  dis- 
astrous for  Ireland,  for  the  United  Kingdom,  and  for 
the  British  Empire,  but  that  it  would  mean  for  Irishmen 
the  acceptance  of  an  inferior  status  in  the  Empire.  As 
citizens  of  the  United  Kingdom,  he  held,  they  were  more 
honourably  situated  than  they  could  be  as  citizens  of 
an  Irish  State  within  the  Emi3ire.  This  was  an  attitude 
of  mind  which  Ulster  could  endorse,  although  it  did  not 
fully  represent  Ulster's  conviction  :  but  this  was  the 
case  which  Sir  Edward  Carson  always  made  on  behalf 
of  Ulster,  and  he  made  it  as  an  Irishman  whose  personal 
interests  and  connections  lay  in  the  South  of  Ireland, 
not  in  the  North.  His  argument  was  the  more  persuasive 
because  it  was  based  on  a  view  of  Ireland's  true  interest — 
not  of  Ulster's  only  ;  and  it  was  the  harder  on  that  account 
for  Redmond  to  repel  peremptorily.  More  than  this, 
between  him  and  Redmond  there  was  an  old  personal 
tie.  The  Irish  Bar  is  a  true  centre  of  intercourse  between 
men  of  varying  political  and  religious  beliefs,  and  as 
junior  barristers  Edward  Carson  and  John  Redmond 
went  the  Munster  circuit  together. 

All  this  lay  behind  the  appeal  which  on  February  11, 
1914,  was  implied  rather  than  expressed  in  the  novel 
phrase  and  still  more  unaccustomed  tone  of  a  con- 
summate orator. 

"  Believe  me,"  Sir  Edward  Carson  said,  "  whatever 
way  you  settle  the  Irish  question "  (and  that  phrase 
thrcAv  over  the  cry  of  '"'  No  Home  Rule  "),  "  there  are 
only  two  ways  to  deal  with  Ulster.  It  is  for  statesmen 
to  say  which  is  the  best  and  right  one.  She  is  not  a  part 
of  the  community  which  can  be  bought.  She  will  not 
allow  herself  to  be  sold.  You  must  therefore  either 
coerce  her  if  you  go  on,  or  you  must  in  the  long  run,  by 
showing  that  good  government  can  come  under  the  Home 
Rule  Bill,  try  and  win  her  over  to  the  case  of  the  rest 
of  Ireland.  You  probably  can  coerce  her — though  I 
doubt  it.     If  you  do,  what  will  be  the  di;iastrous  conse- 

8 


98  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

quences  not  only  to  Ulster,  but  to  this  country  and  the 
Empire  ?  Will  my  fellow-countryman  " — and  at  this 
emphatic  word,  which  jettisoned  absolutely  the  theory 
of  two  nations,  the  speaker  turned  to  his  left,  where 
Redmond  sat  in  his  accustomed  place  below  the  gangway 
— "  will  my  fellow-countryman,  the  leader  of  the  Nation- 
alist Party,  have  gained  anything  ?  I  will  agree  with 
him — I  do  not  believe  he  wants  to  triumph  any  more 
than  I  do.  But  will  he  have  gained  anything  if  he  takes 
over  these  peojDle  and  then  a^Dplies  for  what  he  used  to 
call — at  all  events  his  party  used  to  call — the  enemies 
of  the  peoi^le  to  come  in  and  coerce  them  into  obedience  ? 
No,  sir  ;  one  false  step  taken  in  relation  to  Ulster  will, 
in  my  opinion,  render  for  ever  impossible  a  solution  of 
the  Irish  question.  I  say  this  to  my  Nationalist  fellow- 
countrymen,  and,  indeed,  also  to  the  Government  :  you 
have  never  tried  to  win  over  Ulster.  You  have  never 
tried  to  understand  her  position.  You  have  never  alleged, 
and  can  never  allege,  that  this  Bill  gives  her  one  atom 
of  advantage." 

Then,  carried  away  by  the  course  of  his  argument,  an 
angry  note  came  into  his  voice,  and  before  a  minute  had 
passed  we  were  back  in  the  old  atmosphere.  He  accused 
us  of  wanting  "  not  Ulster's  affections  but  her  taxes." 

Well  might  Redmond  say  when  lie  rose  that  Sir  Edward 
Carson  had  been  heard  by  all  of  us  with  very  mixed 
feelings.  "  I  care  not  about  the  assent  of  Englishmen," 
he  said  ;  "  I  am  fighting  this  matter  out  between  a  fellow- 
countrj^man  and  myself,  and  I  say  that  it  was  an  un- 
worthy thing  for  him  to  say  that  I  am  animated  by  these 
base  motives,  especially  after  he  had  lectured  the  House 
on  the  undesirability  of  imputing  motives." 

On  the  personal  note  Redmond  was  to  the  full  as 
effective  as  his  opponent,  and  his  speech  of  that  day 
was  memorable.  It  was  also  very  much  more  to  the 
taste  of  the  Liberal  rank  and  file  than  what  came  from 
their   own   front   bench.     *'  We   do   not   by   any   means 


THE  RIVAL  VOLUNTEER  FORCES  99 

take  the  tragic  view  of  the  probabilities  or  even  the 
possibilities  of  what  is  called  civil  war  in  Ulster,"  he 
said  ;  and  added  that  the  House  of  Commons  ought,  in 
his  opinion,  "  to  resent  as  an  affront  these  threats  of  civil 
war."  Yet  in  the  end  he  promised,  for  the  sake  of 
peace,  "  consideration  in  the  friendliest  spirit  "  (not  very 
different  from  accei)tancc)  of  any  proposals  that  the 
Government  might  feel  called  upon  to  put  forward. 

It  is  noteworthy  that  in  this  prolonged  debate  there 
was  no  reference  to  the  new  fact  of  a  second  volunteer 
force.  But  on  February  12th  a  question  was  asked 
about  it.  On  the  17th  there  was  allusion  to  another 
growing  element  of  danger — the  discussions  among  officers 
of  the  Army  of  a  combined  refusal  to  serve  against  Ulster. 
All  these  factors  must  have  weighed  with  Redmond  and 
with  his  chief  colleagues  in  their  discussions  with  the 
Government  during  the  next  three  weeks.  "  Friendly 
consideration "  passed  into  acceptance  on  March  9th, 
when  Mr.  Asquith,  introducing  the  Home  Rule  Bill  for 
its  passage  in  the  third  consecutive  session  (as  required 
by  the  Parliament  Act),  outlined  the  proposed  modifi- 
cations in  it.  They  involved  partition.  But  the  exclusion 
was  to  be  optional  by  areas  and  limited  in  time. 

The  proposal  to  take  a  vote  by  counties  had,  it  will 
be  remembered,  been  originally  suggested  by  Mr.  Bonar 
Law,  and  in  following  the  Prime  Minister  he  could  not 
well  repudiate  it.  The  test,  however,  which  he  now  put 
forward  was  whether  or  not  the  proposals  satisfied  Ulster  : 
and  he  fixed  upon  the  time-limit  of  six  years  as  being 
wholly  unacceptable.  Redmond,  on  the  other  hand,  while 
declaring  that  the  Government  had  gone  to  "  the  extremest 
limits  of  concession,"  said  that  the  proi:)osals  had  one 
merit :  they  would  "  elicit  beyond  doubt  or  question  by 
a  free  ballot  the  real  opinion  of  the  jDcople  of  Ulster." 
This  indicated  his  conviction  that  if  Home  Rule  really 
came  the  majority  in  Ulster  would  prefer  to  take  their 
chances  under  it ;   the  proposal  of  exclusion  being  merely 


100  JOHN   REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

a  tactical  manoeuvre  to  defeat  Home  Rule  by  splitting 
the  Nationalists. 

Its  efficacy  for  that  purpose  was  immediately  demon- 
strated. Mr.  O'Brien  followed  Redmond  with  a  virulent 
denunciation  of  "  the  one  concession  of  all  others  which 
must  be  hateful  and  unthinkable  from  the  point  of  view 
of  any  Nationalist  in  Ireland."  Opposition  from  Mr. 
O'Brien  and  from  Mr.  Healy  was  no  new  thing.  But 
by  acceptance  of  these  proposals  the  Nationalist  leader 
made  their  oj)position  for  the  first  time  really  formidable. 
Telegrams  rained  in  that  March  afternoon — above  all 
on  Mr.  Devlin,  from  his  suj^porters  in  Belfast,  who  felt 
themselves  betrayed  and  shut  out  from  a  national  triumph 
which  they  had  been  the  most  zealous  to  promote.  From 
this  time  onward  the  position  of  Redmond  personally 
and  of  his  party  as  a  whole  was  perceptibly  weakened. 
Especially  an  alienation  began  between  him  and  the 
Catholic  hierarchy.  It  was  impossible  that  the  clergy 
should  be  well  disposed  towards  proposals  which,  as  Mr. 
Heal}''  put  it,  would  make  Cardinal  Logue  a  foreigner 
in  his  own  cathedral  at  Armagh. 

Yet  upon  the  whole  the  shake  to  Redmond's  power 
was  less  than  might  have  been  ex^Dected — largely,  no 
doubt,  because  the  offer  was  repelled.  Sir  Edward  Carson 
described  it  as  "  sentence  of  death  with  stay  of  execution 
for  six  years."  With  a  great  advocate's  instinct,  he 
fastened  on  the  point  in  the  Government's  proposal 
which  was  least  defensible. 

In  my  opinion  these  modifications  of  the  Bill  were 
never  adequately  discussed  in  the  meetings  of  the  Irish 
party.  All  was  done  between  the  Government  and 
Redmond's  inner  cabinet,  consisting  of  Redmond  himself, 
Mr.  Dillon,  Mr.  DevHn  and  Mr.  T.  P.  O'Connor.  The 
negotiations  were  most  delicate  and  difficult,  and  above 
all  secrecy  is  hard  to  maintain  when  a  body  of  over  seventy 
men,  each  keenly  concerned  for  the  view  of  his  consti- 
tuents, comes  to  be  consulted.    Yet  I  think  it  a  pity 


THE  RIVAL  VOLUNTEER  FORCES         101 

that  the  party  never  thrashed  this  question  out.  Once 
the  principle  of  option  was  admitted,  a  great  deal  had 
to  be  considered.  Voting  must  be  a  referendum  either 
to  the  province  as  a  whole,  to  the  constituencies  separ- 
ately, or  to  local  units  of  administration.  A  referendum 
by  constituencies  was  as  impossible  as  one  by  parishes  : 
for  instance,  Mr.  Devlin's  West  Belfast,  out  of  the  city's 
four  divisions,  would  certainly  have  voted  to  remain 
under  the  Irish  Parliament,  and  an  absurd  situation 
would  have  resulted.  The  choice  lay  between  a  vote 
by  counties  or  by  the  province  as  a  whole.  In  the  pro- 
vince, three  counties  out  of  nine  were  as  j^redominantly 
Nationalist  as  any  part  of  Leinster.  In  two  others, 
Tyrone  and  Fermanagh,  Nationalists  were  about  55  per 
cent,  of  the  electorate.  But  the  bulk  of  the  population 
of  Ulster  resided  in  four  counties  of  the  north-east,  so 
that  Protestants  over  the  whole  province  had  a  majority 
of  some  two  hundred  thousand.  An  appeal  to  the  pro- 
vince, therefore,  might  involve  the  exclusion  from  Home 
Rule  of  a  very  large  area  which  was  thoroughly  National- 
ist. On  the  other  hand,  every  scheme  of  exclusion  had 
in  view  the  possibility  of  the  excluded  area  changing 
its  mind  on  the  question  after  a  short  trial.  To  separate 
the  four  overwhelmingly  Protestant  counties  was  to  set 
up  a  body  in  which  a  change  of  vote  would  be  much 
harder  to  bring  about  than  in  the  province.  As  a  matter 
of  statesmanship  there  was  much  to  be  said  for  closing 
with  the  LHstermen's  original  demand  that  the  province 
should  come  in  or  stay  out  as  a  whole.  It  satisfied  Leister's 
sentiment  and  lessened  the  chances  of  crystallizing  a 
Protestant  block  of  excluded  territory,  which  would  tend 
to  become  less  and  less  Irish. 

The  answer  to  this  was  that  Nationalists  would  never 
consent  and  did  never  consent  to  the  possibility  of  per- 
manent exclusion  for  anj^  part.  Insistence  on  the  time- 
limit  was  from  this  point  of  view  a  matter  of  absolute 
principle.     Yet   many   believed   then,   and   believe   now, 


102  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

that  if  any  part  of  Ulster  were  excluded  by  legislation 
it  would  certainly  come  in  voluntarily  after  a  short  period. 
On  the  other  hand,  if  any  part  were  excluded  even  for 
a  year,  it  was  difficult  to  believe  that  it  could  ever  be 
brought  in  except  by  its  own  consent.  The  view,  how- 
ever, to  which  we  were  committed  (with  the  party's 
general  approval),  was  expressed  by  Redmond  at  the 
customary  St.  Patrick's  Day  Nationalist  banquet  in 
London. 

"  To  agree  to  the  permanent  partition  of  Ireland  would 
be,"  he  said,  "  an  outrage  upon  nature  and  upon  history." 
He  quoted  a  phrase  used  by  Mr.  Austen  Chamberlain, 
who  had  described  it  as  "  the  statutory  negation  of 
Ireland's  national  claim."  But,  he  argued,  no  such 
sacrifice  of  principle  had  been  made.  The  demand  of 
Nationalists  was  for  a  Parliament  for  the  whole  of  Ireland, 
having  power  to  deal  with  "  every  purely  Irish  matter." 
Temporary  limitations  of  this  demand  had  alreadj''  been 
accepted. 

"  We  have  agreed,  as  Parnell  agreed  in  the  Bill  of  1886, 
and  as  we  all  agreed  in  the  Bill  of  1893,  that  the  power 
of  dealing  with  some  of  the  most  vital  of  Irish  questions 
should  not  come  within  the  purview  of  the  new  Parlia- 
ment for  a  definite  number  of  years."  The  control  of 
police,  for  instance,  was  reserved  to  the  Imperial  Parlia- 
ment in  all  those  Bills  for  a  term  of  years.  But  this  did 
not  mean  that  Parnell  or  we  abandoned  Ireland's  right 
to  manage  her  own  police.  Reservation  of  the  police 
in  perpetuity  would  have  been  impossible  to  accept. 
In  the  same  way,  said  Redmond,  "  the  automatic  ending 
of  any  period  of  exclusion  is  for  us  a  fixed  and  immutable 
principle." 

To  maintain  this  conformity  with  national  sentiment 
great  advantages  were  sacrificed.  The  whole  debates 
of  this  period  turned  on  the  question  of  the  time-limit. 
If  it  had  never  been  raised,  opposition  would  still  have 
existed,  but   the  fact  would  have  been  plain  from  the 


THE  RIVAL  VOLUNTEER  FORCES  103 

outset  that  Protestant  Ulster  claimed  to  dictate  not 
only  where  it  had  the  majority,  but  where  the  majority 
was  against  it.  Redmond  probably  believed  that  the 
opinion  of  Nationalists  in  the  North  could  not  be  brought 
to  consent  to  abandonment  of  the  time-limit.  If  so, 
he  probably  underrated,  then  as  always,  the  influence 
he  possessed.  It  is  always  easy  to  persuade  Irishmen 
that  if  you  are  going  to  do  a  thing  you  should  do  it 
"  decently."  What  is  more,  a  real  effect  could  have 
been  produced  on  much  moderate  opinion  in  Ulster  by 
saying  to  Ulster  :  "  Stay  out  if  you  like,  and  come  in 
when  you  like.  When  you  come  in,  you  will  be  more 
than  welcome."  But  the  decision  for  this  course  would 
have  needed  to  be  taken  before  the  proposals  were  made, 
since  any  attempt  to  enlarge  them  was  bound  to  renew 
and  intensify  the  inevitable  storm  of  Nationalist  dissent. 
Whatever  the  proposal,  it  should  have  been  absolutely 
the  last  word  of  concession. 

If  a  clear  proposal  of  local  option  by  counties  without 
time-limit  had  been  put  before  Parliament  and  the  elec- 
torate, I  do  not  think  our  position  in  Ireland  would  have 
been  worse  than  it  was  made  by  the  proposal  of  temporary 
exclusion,  and  it  would  have  been  greatly  strengthened 
in  Parliament  and  in  the  United  Kingdom.  All  moderate 
men,  and  many  pronounced  LTnionists,  were  becoming 
uneasy  under  the  perpetual  menace  of  trouble.  Events 
which  now  followed  rapidly  turned  the  uneasiness  into 
grave  anxiety,  but  did  not  turn  it  to  the  profit  of  the 
Government. 

The  policy  which  was  adopted  in  Mr,  Asquith's  pro- 
posal of  March  9th  was  the  policy  which  Mr.  Churchill 
had  pushed  from  the  first  introduction  of  the  Home  Rule 
Bill,  even  when  it  was  formally  disavowed  by  the  Prime 
Minister.  Contemptuous  rejection  of  it  by  the  Ulster- 
men  when  it  was  proposed  was  not  calculated  to  strengthen 
Mr.  Churchill's  personal  position,  or  to  soothe  his  temper, 
and  on  March  14th  he  made  a  speech  at  Bradford  which 


104  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

very  greatly  stirred  public  feeling.  If  Ulster  really 
rejects  the  offer,  said  Mr.  Churchill,  "  it  can  only  be 
because  they  prefer  shooting  to  voting  and  the  bullet 
to  the  ballot."  Should  civil  war  break  out  in  Ulster, 
the  issue  would  not  be  confined  to  Ireland  :  the  issue 
would  be  whether  civil  and  parliamentary  government 
in  these  realms  was  to  be  beaten  down  by  the  menace 
of  armed  force.  Bloodshed  was  lamentable,  but  there 
were  worse  things.  If  the  law  could  not  prevail,  if  the 
veto  of  violence  was  to  replace  the  veto  of  privilege, 
then,  said  the  orator,  "  let  us  go  forward  and  put  these 
grave  matters  to  a  proof." 

When  Mr.  Churchill  next  ajDpeared  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  a  great  outburst  of  cheering  showed  what  a 
volume  of  feeling  had  found  expression  in  his  speech. 
Redmond  came  to  the  St.  Patrick's  Day  banquet  under 
the  impression  of  that  scene,  and  he  spoke  with  a  confi- 
dence which  gives  to  his  words  a  tragic  irony  to-day. 
He  cited  "  the  suj)erb  speech  of  Mr.  Churchill  "  as  evidence 
that  "  what  is  our  last  word  is  also  the  last  word  of  the 
Government." 

"  If  the  Opposition  have  spoken  their  last  word,"  he 
said,  "  the  Bill  will  now  j^roceed  upon  its  natural  course. 
It  will  proceed  rapidlj?^  and  irresistibly,  and  in  a  few  short 
weeks  become  the  law  of  the  land." 

The  weeks  have  lengthened  into  years,  and  so  much 
has  happened  in  them  that  I  keep  no  clear  memory  of 
that  evening,  though  I  was  present.  But  it  represented 
the  temper  of  the  time,  among  Home  Rulers,  and  more 
particularly  among  Irish  Nationalists,  who  generally 
held  the  opinion  that  the  military  preparations  in  Ulster 
were,  as  Mr.  Devlin  called  them,  "  a  hollow  masquerade." 

We  saw  the  other  side  of  the  picture  on  Thursday, 
March  19th,  when  a  Vote  of  Censure  was  moved.  Mr. 
Bonar  Law  launched  on  the  House  of  Commons  a  new 
and  sinister  suggestion. 

"  What  about  the  Army  ?     If  it  is  only  a  question  of 


THE   RIVAL  VOLUNTEER   FORCES  105 

disorder,  the  Army  I  am  sure  will  obey  jou,  and  I  am  sure 
that  it  ought  to  obey  you  ;  but  if  it  reallj''  is  a  question 
of  civil  war,  soldiers  are  citizens  like  the  rest  of  us." 

Sir  Edward  rose  immediately  the  Prime  Minister  had 
replied  to  Mr.  Bonar  Law,  and  his  speech  was  furious. 
"  In  consequence  of  the  trifling  with  this  subject  by 
the  Prime  Minister  and  the  provocation,  which  he  has 
endorsed,  by  the  First  Lord  of  the  Admiralty  last  Satur- 
day, I  feel  I  ought  not  to  be  here  but  in  Belfast,"  he 
said  ;  and  he  indicated  his  intention  of  proceeding  there 
as  soon  as  he  had  spoken.  What  he  had  to  say  chiefly 
concerned  the  Army,  and  the  preparations  which  were 
being  made  at  the  War  Office  for  the  despatch  of  troops 
to  Ulster.  He  suggested  that  there  was  the  intention 
to  provoke  an  attack  so  that  there  might  be  "  pretext 
for  putting  them  down." 

"  You  will  be  all  right.  You  will  be  no  longer 
cowards.  The  cowardice  will  have  been  given  up. 
You  will  have  become  men  in  entrenching  yourselves 
behind  the  Army.  But  under  your  direction  they  will 
have  become  assassins." 

With  these  words — memorable  in  connection  with 
what  haj)pened  later,  but  not  in  Ulster — the  Ulster  leader 
left  the  House,  followed  by  Captain  Craig.  Friday's 
papers  were  of  course  full  of  the  debate.  At  noon  on 
that  day,  March  20,  1914,  General  Sir  Arthur  Paget, 
Commander-in-Chief  in  Ireland,  held  a  meeting  with  the 
officers  at  the  Curragh  and  received  the  intimation  that 
the  majority  of  them  would  resign  their  commissions 
rather  than  go  on  duty  which  was  likelj?^  to  involve  a 
collision  with  Ulster. 

It  seems  only  fair  in  dealing  with  this  whole  incident 
to  print  here  an  account  of  what  happened,  written  from 
the  soldier's  point  of  view,  by  the  man  who  was  the  spokes- 
man and  leader  of  the  resigning  officers — Brigadier  (now 
Lieutenant)  General  Sir  Hubert  Gough.^ 

'  Manchester  Guardian,  February  4,  1919 


106  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

'  "  I  never  refused  to  obey  orders.  On  the  contrary, 
I  obeyed  them.  I  was  ordered  to  make  a  decision — namely, 
to  leave  the  Army  or  '  to  undertake  active  operations 
against  Ulster.'  These  were  the  very  words  of  the  terms 
offered.  As  I  was  given  a  choice,  I  accepted  it,  and  chose 
the  first  alternative,  and  as  a  matter  of  fact  I  have  a  letter 
in  existence  written  the  night  before  the  offer  was  made 
by  Sir  A.  Paget  to  my  brother,  saying  :  '  Something  is 
up  '  (we  had  been  suddenly  ordered  to  a  conference). 
'  What  is  it  ?  If  I  receive  orders  to  march  North,  of 
course  I  will  go.'  '" 

'  All  the  officers  of  the  3rd  Cavalry  Brigade  took  the 
same  line  '  (continues  the  correspondent  of  the  Manchester 
Guardian)  '  and  resigned.  This  decision  seems  not  to  have 
been  expected  by  the  authorities,  and  caused  great  pertur- 
bation. General  Gough  was  urged  b}'  Sir  Arthur  Paget 
to  withdraw  the  resignation.  Sir  Arthur  Paget  told  them 
that  the  operations  against  Ulster  were  to  be  of  a  purely 
defensive  nature.  Unfortunately,  Sir  Arthur  Paget  based 
his  appeal  on  expediency  and  private  interest,  and  not 
sufticientlj'  on  the  call  of  public  duty.  This  failed  to 
influence  the  officers.  They  persisted  in  their  resigna- 
tions, and  only  finally  withdrew  them  on  receiving  a 
written  undertaking  from  the  War  Office  that  they  would 
not  be  again  presented  A^ith  the  alternative  of  resigning 
or  attacking  Ulster.' 

The  Irish  Party  had  no  guess  at  the  inner  aspect  of 
the  occurrence.  Naturally,  but  regrettably,  we  were 
the  section  of  the  House  which  had  least  touch  with 
what  was  thought  and  felt  in  barrack-rooms  and  regi- 
mental messes.  Naturally,  but  most  regrettably,  the 
opinion  of  the  Army  regarded  us  traditionally  as  a  hostile 
body  ;  and  at  this  time  every  effort  to  accentuate  that 
belief  was  made  by  the  political  party  with  which  the 
Army  had  most  intercourse  and  connection. 

Writing  now,  as  I  hope  I  may  write  without  offence, 
of  a  state  of  things  not  far  off  in  time,  but  divided  from 
us  of  to-day  by  the  marks  of  a  vast  upheaval,  it  can  be 
said  that  the  old  professional  Army  was  a  society  governed 
in  an  extraordinary  degree  by  tradition.     Part  of  that 


THE  RIVAL  VOLUNTEER  FORCES    107 

tradition  was  that  the  Army  had  no  politics  ;  and  as 
everyone  knows,  the  man  who  says  he  has  no  poUtics 
is  in  practice  ahnost  invariably  a  Conservative.  In  the 
Army,  usage  was  at  its  strongest — stronger  even  than 
at  a  public  school ;  it  was  almost  bad  manners,  *'  bad 
form,"  to  hold  political  opinions  differing  from  those  of 
your  mess.  Political  discussion  was  sharply  discouraged  ; 
but  this  never  meant  that  a  man  might  not  express 
vehemently  the  prevailing  opinion.  On  the  broad  facts 
it  was  inevitable  that  the  prevailing  opinion  should  be 
unfriendly  to  Irish  Nationalists.  Irish  Nationalists  had 
taken  passionately  the  line  of  opposition  to  the  South 
African  War  ;  they  had  been  sharply  critical  of  all  the 
minor  campaigns  in  which  the  Army  had  been  engaged 
for  repression  or  for  conquest  during  the  Avhole  period 
since  Parnell  began  his  leadership.  In  Ireland  itself, 
every  man  who  reflected  for  a  moment  saw  at  the  Curragh 
the  very  embodiment  of  that  force  which  had  maintained 
for  over  a  hundred  years  a  Government  which  had  not 
the  consent  of  the  governed  ;  and  unless  he  was  one  of 
those  who  regarded  themselves  as  "  England's  faithful 
garrison  in  Ireland,"  protestations  of  enthusiasm  for 
the  armed  forces  of  the  Crown  could  not  be  the  natural 
expression  of  his  feelings. 

Yet  mingled  with  the  Nationalists'  attitude  of  estrange- 
ment from  the  forces  which  upheld  a  detested  system  of 
government  there  was  a  deep-seated  pride  in  the  exploits 
of  Irish  trooj)s  ;  and  no  man  ever  felt  this  more  strongly 
than  Redmond.  He  seldom  spoke  of  the  distinguished 
men  he  met,  but  again  and  again  I  remember  hearing 
him  mention  with  pleasure  some  talk  over  a  dinner-table 
with  this  or  that  famous  soldier — Sir  John  French  (as 
he  then  was),  for  instance.  It  was  happiness  for  him  to 
find  himself  on  friendly  terms  with  the  service  to  which 
so  many  sentiments  bound  him.  The  Curragh  incident 
was  to  him  more  than  a  grave  political  event ;  it  pained 
him    beyond    measure    that    this    opposition    should    be 


108  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

headed  by  a  representative  of  one  of  the  Irish  families 
most  famous  for  their  military  record.  In  the  debates 
which  dealt  with  all  this  matter  he  said  no  word,  and 
he  kept  our  party  silent — a  wise  course,  and  one  to  which 
every  instinct  prompted  him. 

In  its  political  aspect,  this  action  of  General  Gough 
and  the  fifty  officers  allied  with  him  revealed  a  new  and 
formidable  impediment  on  the  path  to  Home  Rule ; 
yet  it  was  one  of  those  barriers  which  rally  forces  rather 
than  weaken  them,  and  in  surmounting  which,  or  sweep- 
ing them  aside,  a  new  impetus  may  be  gained.  The 
incident  was  first  discussed  in  the  House  on  Monday, 
March  23rd,  and  continued  to  dominate  all  other  questions 
for  several  days.  From  the  Labour  benches  Mr.  John 
Ward  (now  Colonel),  who  had  been  a  private  soldier,  gave 
the  first  indication  of  the  volume  of  resentment.  His 
speech,  remarkable  in  its  power  both  of  phrasing  and 
of  thought,  was  delivered  quite  unexpectedly  in  a  thin 
House  ;  but  its  effect  was  electrical.  Later,  Mr.  J.  H. 
Thomas  spoke  in  tlie  same  strain.  When  a  railway 
strike  was  threatened,  the  soldiers  had  been  called  out 
and  had  come  without  a  murmur.  Was  the  Army  to 
be  used  against  all  movements  except  those  under  the 
patronage  of  the  Tory  party  ?  If  so,  he  would  tell  his 
four  hundred  thousand  railway  men  to  equip  themselves 
to  defend  their  own  interests. 

These  speeches  set  people  thinking  very  gravely,  but 
their  effect  was  to  increase  the  confidence  of  Home  Rulers 
— the  more  so  as  Sir  Edward  Grey,  in  one  of  his  rare 
moments  of  emphasis,  declared  his  determination  to  go 
as  far  as  either  speaker  if  the  case  which  they  fore- 
shadowed should  arise.  But  new  occurrences  disquieted 
the  public  ;  the  bungling  which  had  characterized  deal- 
ings with  the  officers  at  the  Curragh  was  not  ended  there. 
General  Gough  received  a  document  from  Colonel  Seely, 
Secretary  of  State  for  War,  countersigned  by  Sir  John 
French  and  Sir  Spencer  Ewart,   the  military  heads  of 


THE   RIVAL  VOLUNTEER  FORCES  109 

the  War  Office  ;  and  this  document  was  in  part  disavowed 
by  the  Cabinet.  The  two  Generals  resigned  and  Colonel 
Seely  followed  their  examj)le.  I  have  never  seen  the 
House  of  Commons  so  completely  surprised  as  on  the 
afternoon  when  the  Prime  Minister  announced  that  he 
himself  would  succeed  to  the  vacant  office.  The  surprise 
passed  at  once  into  a  feeling  of  immense  relief,  very  widely 
shared  by  all  parties.  The  right  thing  had  been  done 
in  the  right  way,  and  it  was  clear  that  Mr.  Asquith  pos- 
sessed enormous  authority,  if  he  chose  to  assert  it. 

The  effect  of  all  these  happenings  was  immediately 
perceptible  in  the  resumed  discussion  on  the  Home  Rule 
Bill.  Mr.  Dillon,  speaking  on  the  second  day,  said  : 
"  Yesterday  for  the  first  time  I  heard  this  question 
debated  in  a  spirit  of  reasonableness  and  conciliation 
and  with  an  evident  desire  on  both  sides  to  reach  an 
agreement."  A  proposal  frequently  put  forward  from 
the  Tory  side  suggested  exclusion  until  a  federal  arrange- 
ment for  the  United  Kingdom  could  be  completed.  The 
official  Tory  demand  was  for  either  a  referendum  or  a 
general  election.  But,  as  Redmond  pointed  out  when 
he  spoke  on  the  fourth  and  last  day  of  the  debate,  any 
proposal  for  a  settlement  must  be  a  settlement  which 
Ulster  would  accept,  and  Ulster  declared  that  it  would 
not  be  influenced  by  any  vote  of  the  British  peoiDle  or 
by  any  Act  of  Parliament.  In  a  passage  of  very  genuine 
feeling  he  indicated  what  Ulster  might  do  to  assist  him 
in  securing  for  Ulster  the  extremest  limit  of  concession  : 

"  Anything  which  would  mean  burying  the  hatchet, 
anything  which  would  mean  the  consent  of  these  Ulster- 
men  to  shake  hands  frankly  with  their  fellow-countrymen 
across  the  hateful  memories  of  the  past,  would  be  wel- 
comed with  universal  joy  in  Ireland,  and  would  be  gladly 
purchased  by  very  large  sacrifices  indeed.  If  the  right 
honourable  and  learned  gentleman  (Sir  Edward  Carson) 
would  say  to  me,  '  We  are  both  Irishmen  ;  we  both  love 
our  country ;    we   both    hate — and    I    am  sure  this  is 


110  JOHN   REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

absolutely  true  of  both  of  us — we  both  hate  all  the 
old  sectarian  animosities,  all  the  old  wrongs,  all  the  old 
memories  which  have  kept  Irishmen  apart ;  let  us  come 
together  and  see  what  we  can  do  for  the  welfare  of  our 
common  country,  so  that  we  can  hand  down  to  those 
who  come  after  us  an  Ireland  more  free,  more  peaceful, 
more  tolerant,  an  Ireland  less  cursed  by  racial  and 
religious  differences  '  ;  if  an  appeal  like  that  were  made 
to  me,  I  say  without  the  smallest  hesitation  that  there 
are  no  lengths  that  Nationalist  Ireland  would  not  be 
willing  to  go  to  assuage  the  fears,  allay  the  anxieties,  and 
remove  the  prejudices  of  their  Ulster  fellow-countrymen. 

"  But,  alas  !  that  is  not  the  position.  Even  the  per- 
manent exclusion  of  Ulster  is  not  put  forward  as  the  price 
of  reconciliation  ;  it  is  simply  put  forward  as  the  one 
and  sole  condition  upon  which  they  will  give  up  their 
avowed  intention  of  levying  war  upon  their  feUow- 
countrymen." 

He  dealt  with  the  federal  proposal,  and  once  more 
avowed  his  desire  for  that  solution.  "  I  have  been  all 
my  political  life  preaching  in  favour  of  federalism." 
But  he  could  not  consent  that  the  exclusion  of  Ulster 
should  be  prolonged  indefinitely  pending  a  settlement 
on  federal  lines,  nor  consent  to  any  "  watering  down 
of  the  powers  in  the  present  Home  Rule  Bill." 

What  remained  then,  if  Ulster  would  not  accept  the 
offer  ?  Nothing  but  "  to  proceed  calmly  with  the  Bill." 
Threats  of  civil  war  he  discounted.  Disturbances  there 
M'ould  probably  be ;  but  when  the  first  Home  Rule 
Bill  was  defeated,  there  were  weeks  of  the  most  terrible 
riots  in  Belfast.  The  House  could  not  afford  to  be 
deterred  from  any  course  by  threats  of  violence  ;  and 
he  was  confident  that  the  Bill  Avould  pass  into  law  and 
profoundly   confident   it   would   never   be  revoked. 

He  gave  his  reasons  for  that  confidence  in  a  passage 
almost  autobiographical  in  character — if  only  because 
it  made   the  House  realize  how  comx^letely  this  man's 


THE  RIVAL  VOLUNTEER  FORCES    HI 

whole  adult  life  had  been  devoted  to  this  one  long  service, 
and  how  far  the  labours  of  our  party  had  achieved  their 
purpose. 

"  In  a  sense  I  may  say  I  have  lived  my  whole  life  within 
these  walls.  I  came  in  here  little  more  than  a  boy,  and 
I  have  grown  old  in  the  House  of  Commons,  and  in  the 
long  space  of  3"ears  which  have  passed  since  then  I  have 
witnessed  the  most  extraordinary  transformation  of  the 
whole  public  life  of  this  country,  and  I  have  witnessed 
an  almost  miraculous  change  in  the  position  and  the 
f)rospects  of  the  Irish  National  Cause.  When  I  came  to 
this  House,  Irish  Nationalist  members,  in  a  sense,  were 
almost  outcasts.  Botli  the  great  British  parties — there 
was  no  Labour  party  then — divided  on  everything  else, 
were  united  in  hostihty  to  the  national  movement  and 
the  national  ideal.  Home  Rule  seemed  hopelessly  out 
of  the  range  of  practical  politics.  There  were  only  a 
handful  of  men  in  this  whole  House  of  Commons  besides 
us  who  were  in  favour  of  any  measure  of  Home  Rule  for 
Ireland.  Outside,  the  public  opinion  of  this  country 
was  ignorant,  and  it  m  as  actively  hostile,  and  we  found 
it  impossible  to  gain  tlie  ear  of  the  democracy  of  England 
for  the  voice  of  Ireland.  All  that  has  vanished  into  thin 
air.  All  that  has  radically  changed.  The  change  has 
been  slow  and  gradual,  but  it  has  been  continuous  and 
sure.  Such  a  change  as  that  can  never  be  reversed. 
You  might  as  well  talk  of  the  world  going  back  to  the 
days  before  electricity'  or  petrol  as  hope  to  bring  back 
the  j)rejudices  and  the  ignorance  of  the  masses  of  the 
people  in  this  country  about  Ireland,  as  they  existed  in 
the  past." 

His  confidence  was  strong  and  it  communicated  itself 
to  Ireland,  But  whatever  could  be  said  to  shake  confi- 
dence was  said  by  Mr.  O'Brien  and  Mr.  Healy,  who 
denounced  the  Bill  as  worthless  when  linked  to  the  plan 
of  even  temporary  partition,  and  declared  that,  whatever 
the  Government  might  say  at  present,  we  had  not  yet 


112  JOHN   REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

reached  the  end  of  their  concessions.  On  the  division 
they  and  their  party  abstained,  so  that  the  majority 
dropped  to  77. 

Up  to  this  point  it  is  still  true  to  say  that  the  Nationalist 
party  Avere  constant  to  their  faith  in  strictly  constitutional 
action.  But  a  new  development  was  imminent.  On  the 
night  of  Friday  to  Saturday,  April  24th-25th,  Ulstermen 
brought  off  their  first  overt  act  of  rebellion.  They  seized 
the  ports  of  Lame  and  Donaghadee,  cut  off  telephone 
and  telegraph,  landed  a  very  large  quantitj^  of  rifles 
and  ammunition,  and  despatched  them  to  every  quarter 
of  the  province  by  means  of  a  great  fleet  of  motor-cars 
which  had  been  mobilized  for  the  occasion.  It  was  a 
clean  and  excellent  piece  of  staff  work,  planned  by  a 
capable  soldier  and  carried  out  under  military  direction  : 
and  the  Tory  Press  hailed  it  with  no  less  enthusiasm 
than  was  elicited  by  the  most  imjiortant  victories  in  the 
recent  war. 

One  coastguard,  running  to  give  the  alarm,  died  of 
heart  failure  :  otherwise  there  was  no  casualty.  The 
police  and  customs  officers  Avere  confronted  with  force 
majeure  and  submitted  without  show  of  resistance.  The 
Prime  Minister,  in  answering  a  question  as  to  the  action 
which  he  proposed  to  take,  used  these  words  : 

"  In  view  of  this  grave  and  unprecedented  outrage 
the  House  may  be  assured  that  His  Majesty's  Government 
will  take  without  delay  appropriate  steps  to  vindicate 
the  authority  of  the  law  and  protect  officers  and  servants 
of  the  King  and  His  Majesty's  subjects  in  the  exercise 
of  their  legal  rights." 

The  Opposition  was  noticeabl}'^  silent,  and  next  day 
some  embarrassment  was  apparent  when  they  proceeded 
with  a  previously  arranged  Vote  of  Censure  on  the 
Government  for  the  military  and  naval  movements  in 
connection  with  which  the  Curragh  incident  had  occurred. 
The  sum  of  these  movements  amounted  to  desj)atching 
four   companies  to  points  in  Ulster  at  which  very  large 


THE  RIVAL  VOLUNTEER   FORCES  113 

stores  of  arms  and  ammunition  were  lying  under  very 
small  guard — and  at  one  of  which  Ihere  was  a  battery  of 
field  guns  with  no  protecting  infantry.  It  was  regarded  as 
at  least  possible  that  the  stores  might  be  rushed  by  "  evil- 
disposed  persons,  not  fully  under  the  control  of  their 
leaders,"  It  was  also  regarded  as  possible  that  the 
movement  of  these  companies  might  be  resisted  and 
that  much  larger  operations  might  be  thereby  involved. 
The  stationing  of  the  Fleet  opposite  the  Belfast  coast 
was  part  of  the  measures  taken  against  this  latter 
contingency^ 

All  this  preparation  was  denounced  as  a  conspiracy 
organized  by  Mr.  Churchill  with  intent  to  provoke  re- 
bellion and  put  it  down  by  a  massacre.  In  view  of  the 
important  military  operation  which  Ulster  had  just  carried 
out  against  the  Crown,  Mr.  Churchill  was  not  without 
justification  in  comparing  the  motion  to  a  vote  of  censure 
by  the  criminal  classes  on  the  police.  Yet,  after  much 
hard  hitting  in  speech,  he  once  more  led  the  way  in  retreat 
from  the  Government's  position.  Sir  Edward  Grey  had 
declared,  speaking  for  the  Government,  that  beyond  the 
six  years'  limit  they  could  not  go.  Mr.  Churchill  him- 
self had  declared  the  Government's  offer  would  be 
and  should  be  their  last  word.  Yet  now,  avowedly  on 
his  own  account,  and  not  speaking  for  the  Cabinet,  he 
proposed  that  a  new  negotiation  should  be  ojiened  with 
Sir  Edward  Carson. 

This  proposal  elicited  no  response,  and  the  debate 
continued  that  day  in  a  line  of  violent  recrimination. 
But  next  day  Sir  Edward  Carson  rose  and  affirmed  that 
he  had  previously  declared  his  willingness  to  advise 
LTlster  to  close  with  a  proposal  giving  exclusion  until 
a  Federal  scheme  had  been  considered,  when  the  whole 
matter  should  be  reviewed  "  in  the  light  of  the  action 
of  the  Irish  Parliament  and  how  they  got  on."  Now 
he    said  : 

"  I  shall  try  to  make  an  advance  on  whvat  I  said  before. 

9 


114  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

I  will  say  this — and  I  hope  the  House  will  believe  me, 
because,  though  I  do  not  want  to  be  introducing  my 
own  personality  into  it,  I  am  myself  a  southerner  in 
Ireland — I  would  say  this  :  That  if  Home  Rule  is  to  pass, 
much  as  I  detest  it,  and  little  as  I  will  take  any  respon- 
sibility for  the  passing  of  it,  my  earnest  hope,  and  indeed 
I  would  say  my  most  earnest  prayer,  would  be  that  the 
Government  of  Ireland  for  the  South  and  West  would 
prove,  and  might  prove,  such  a  success  in  the  future, 
notwithstanding  all  our  anticipations,  that  it  might  be 
even  for  the  interest  of  Ulster  itself  to  move  towards 
that  Government,  and  come  in  under  it  and  form  one 
unit  in  relation  to  Ireland.  May  I  say  something  more 
than  that  ?  I  would  be  glad  to  see  such  a  state  of  things 
arising  in  Ireland,  in  which  you  would  find  that  mutual 
confidence  and  goodwill  between  all  classes  in  Ireland 
as  would  lead  to  a  stronger  Ireland  as  an  integral  unit 
in  the  federal  scheme.  While  I  say  all  that,  that  depends 
upon  goodwill,  and  never  can  be  brought  about  by 
force." 

Redmond  remained  silent ;  but  months  later  it  became 
known  that  he  had  taken  action  to  foster  this  new  spirit. 
He  advised  the  Prime  Minister  not  to  proceed  with  the 
prosecution  which  had  been  threatened  against  the  Larne 
gun-runners.  But  at  the  same  time  he  urged  upon 
Government  that  they  should  withdraw  the  proclamation 
against  importing  arms  :  and  for  this  he  had  good  reason. 
The  Larne  affair  had  rendered  the  movement  in  support 
of  the  Irish  Volunteers  irresistible,  and  Redmond  had 
decided  to  throw  himself  in  with  it. 

The  result  was  an  amazing  upward  leap  in  the  numbers 
of  the  Volunteers.  On  June  15th  a  question  brought 
out  that  they  were  estimated  at  80,000  against  84,000 
of  the  Ulster  force  ;  but  the  Nationalist  body  was  in- 
creasing at  the  rate  of  15,000  a  week.  By  July  9th  they 
were  reckoned  (on  police  information)  at  132,000,  of 
whom  nearly  forty  thousand  were  Army  reservists. 


THE   RIVAL  VOLUNTEER   FORCES  115 

These  facts  now  dominated  the  situation.  It  was  now 
abundantly  clear  that  if  passing  Home  Rule  meant 
civil  war,  so  also  would  the  abandonment  of  Home  Rule. 
On  June  16th  Lord  Robert  Cecil  raised  a  debate  on  the 
new  danger.  In  that  debate  words  were  quoted  from 
Sir  Roger  Casement,  one  of  the  most  active  promoters 
of  the  movement  :  "  When  you  are  challenged  on  the 
field  of  force,  it  is  upon  that  field  you  must  reply."  Mr. 
Dillon,  who  exulted  in  the  "  splendid  demonstration  of 
national  sentiment  shown  in  the  uprising  of  the  National 
Volunteers,"  urged  strongly  that  the  growth  of  a  rival 
body  was  not  a  menace  to  public  order  but  an  added 
security.  The  armed  Ulstermen  would  be  "  much  slower 
to  break  the  peace  "  when  they  realized  the  certainty 
of  formidable  resistance — and  this,  be  it  said,  was  no 
ungrounded  observation.  Yet  at  the  same  time  the 
very  success  of  the  Volunteer  movement  was  disquieting 
Redmond.  He  was  not  in  the  same  position  as  Sir 
Edward  Carson,  who  from  the  first  had  directed,  presided 
over,  and  controlled  the  raising  and  equipment  of  his 
force  ;  and  unless  the  force  were  to  be  a  menace  to  his 
leadership,  he  must  secure  control.  As  Mr.  Bulmer 
Hobson  puts  it  in  his  History  of  the  Irish  Volunteers  : 

"  The  Volunteers  had  men  in  their  ranks  who  were 
political  followers  of  Mr.  Redmond's,  and  men  who  were 
not,  and  who  never  had  been.  The  latter  were  willing 
to  help  him  if  he  had  been  ready  to  help  them  ;  they 
would  have  made  terms  with  him,  but  were  not  prepared 
to  be  merely  absorbed  into  his  movement," 

The  strength  of  Redmond's  position  lay  in  the  fact 
that  the  vast  majority  of  the  enrolled  men  looked  to  him 
as  their  leader  :  his  weakness,  in  that  the  committees 
under  which  enrolment  had  taken  place  were  largely 
composed  of  the  extremist  section.  He  now  determined 
to  unite  the  Volunteers  with  the  parliamentary  party 
as  the  Ulster  Volunteers  were  linked  with  Sir  Edward 
Carson  and  his  civilian  organization. 


116  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

The  men  with  whom  he  had  to  deal  were  principally 
Professor  MacNeill  and  Sir  Roger  Casement.  His  first 
proposal  was  to  replace  the  existing  Provisional  Com- 
mittee by  another,  consisting  of  nine  members,  with  Pro- 
fessor MacNeill,  who  was  regarded  as  a  general  supporter 
of  Redmond's,  in  the  chair.  Oddly  enough,  the  negotia- 
tions broke  down  because  Redmond  nominated  Michael 
Davitt's  son  along  with  Mr.  Devlin  and  his  own  brother 
to  be  representatives.  The  young  Davitt  had  at  an 
early  stage  expressed  dissent  from  the  movement,  and 
this,  coming  from  his  father's  son,  left  bitter  resentment. 
The  existing  Committee  now  proposed  to  call  a  National 
Convention  of  the  Volunteers.  Such  a  body  would 
clearly  have  become  a  rival,  and  a  powerful  rival,  to  the 
National  Convention  of  a  purely  citizen  type,  and  Redmond 
felt  himself  forced  to  take  drastic  action.  In  a  public 
letter  dated  June  9th  he  wrote  : 

"  I  regret  to  observe  the  controversy  which  is  now 
taking  place  in  the  Press  on  the  Irish  National  Volunteer 
movement.  Many  of  the  writers  convey  the  impression 
that  the  Volunteer  movement  is,  to  some  extent  at  all 
events,  hostile  to  the  objects  and  policy  of  the  Irish 
party.  I  desire  to  say  emphatically  that  there  is  no 
foundation  for  this  idea,  and  any  attempts  to  create 
discord  between  the  Volunteer  movement  and  the  Irish 
party  are  calculated  in  my  opinion  to  ruin  the  Volunteer 
movement,  which,  properly  directed,  may  be  of  incal- 
culable service  to  the  National  Cause. 

"  Up  to  two  months  ago  I  felt  that  the  Volunteer 
movement  was  somewhat  premature,  but  the  effect  of 
Sir  Edward  Carson's  threats  upon  public  opinion  in 
England,  the  House  of  Commons,  and  the  Government ; 
the  occurrences  at  the  Curragh  Camp,  and  the  successful 
gun-running  in  Ulster,  have  vitally  altered  the  position, 
and  the  Irish  party  took  steps  about  six  weeks  ago  to 
inform  their  friends  and  supporters  in  the  country  that 
in  their  opinion  it  was  desirable  to  support  the  Volunteer 


THE   RIVAL  VOLUNTEER   FORCES  117 

movement,  with  the  result  that  within  the  last  six  weeks 
the  movement  has  spread  like  a  prairie  fire,  and  all  the 
Nationalists  of  Ireland  will  shortly  be  enrolled. 

"  Within  the  last  fortnight  I  have  had  communications 
from  men  in  all  parts  of  the  country,  inquiring  as  to  the 
organization  and  control  of  the  Volunteer  movement, 
and  it  has  been  strongly  represented  to  me  that  the 
Governing  Body  should  be  reconstructed  and  placed  on 
a  thoroughly  representative  basis,  so  as  to  give  confidence 
to  all  shades  of  National  opinion." 

Redmond's  proposal  was  that  to  the  existing  Committee 
there  should  be  added  twenty-five  representative  men 
from  different  parts  of  the  country,  nominated  at  the 
instance  of  the  Irish  party  and  in  sympathy  with  its 
policy  and  aims.  Failing  this,  he  intimated  that  it  would 
be  *'  necessary  to  fall  back  on  county  control  and  govern- 
ment until  the  organization  was  sufficiently  complete 
to  make  possible  the  election  of  a  fully  representative 
Executive  by  the  Volunteers  themselves." 

The  intimation  was  not  at  once  accepted.  An  order 
was  issued  calling  on  the  Volunteers  to  elect  additional 
representatives  by  counties  to  be  added  to  the  Committee. 
Redmond  at  once  publicly  declared  that  this  amounted 
to  refusal  of  his  offer,  and  he  put  the  issue  very  plainly. 
The  Provisional  Committee  was  originally  self-constituted 
and  had  been  increased  only  by  co-option.  The  majority 
of  its  members,  he  was  informed,  were  not  supporters 
of  the  Irish  party  :  of  the  rank  and  file  at  least 
95  per  cent.,  he  said,  were  supporters  of  the  Irish 
party  and  its  policy. 

"  This  is  a  condition  of  things  which  plainly  cannot 
continue.  The  rank  and  file  of  the  Volunteers  and  the 
responsible  leaders  of  the  Irish  people  are  entitled,  and 
indeed  are  bound,  to  demand  some  security  that  an 
attempt  shall  not  be  made  in  the  name  of  the  Volunteers 
to  dictate  policy  to  the  National  party,  who,  as  the 
elected  representatives  of  the  people,  are  charged  with 


118  JOHN  REDxMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

the  responsibility  of  deciding  upon  the  policy  best  calcu- 
lated to  bring  the  National  movement  to  success, 

"  Moreover,  a  military  organization  is  of  its  very  nature 
so  grave  and  serious  an  undertaking  that  every  responsible 
Nationalist  in  the  country  who  supports  it  is  entitled 
to  the  most  substantial  guarantees  against  any  j)ossible 
imprudence.  The  best  guarantee  to  be  found  is  clearly 
the  presence  on  the  Governing  Body  of  men  of  proved 
judgment  and  steadiness." 

As  a  last  word  he  renewed  his  threat  of  calling  on  his 
supporters  to  organize  separate  county  committees  inde- 
pendent of  the  Dublin  centre.  This  was  carrying  matters 
with  a  high  hand,  and  the  fact  that  he  succeeded  proves 
the  greatness  of  his  prestige  at  the  moment.  The  Com- 
mittee in  a  published  manifesto  accepted  his  terms,  but 
accepted  them  with  declared  regret,  and  eight  of  the 
original  members  seceded.  Among  them  was  Patrick 
Pearse,  with  whom  went  three  others  who  suffered  death 
in  Easter  week  two  years  later. 

All  this  was  a  disastrous  business,  and  the  worst  part 
of  it  lay  in  the  public  avowal  of  divided  councils.  More- 
over, a  committee  so  constituted  could  not,  and  did  not, 
operate  efficiently.  The  original  members  were  primarily 
interested  in  the  Volunteer  Force ;  the  added  ones 
primarily  in  the  parliamentary  movement.  Nearly  all 
of  the  latter — selected  for  their  "  proved  judgment  and 
steadiness  " — were  men  past  middle  age  ;  and  of  the 
whole  twenty-five  Willie  Redmond  alone  subsequently 
bore  arms. 

There  was  indeed  an  underlying  difference  of  principle. 
Redmond  knew  well,  and  all  parUamentarians  with  him, 
that  under  the  terms  of  the  Home  Rule  Bill  no  army 
could  be  raised  or  maintained  in  Ireland  without  the 
consent  of  the  Imperial  Parliament.  The  original  Volun- 
teer Committee  laid  it  down  as  an  axiom  that  the 
Volunteer  Force  should  be  permanent ;  they  were,  as 
Casement  put  it,   "  the    beginning   of   an   Irish  army." 


THE  RIVAL  VOLUNTEER  FORCES         119 

Sir  Edward  Carson's  policy  had  produced  a  new 
mentality  among  Irish  Nationalists,  and  it  made  many 
take  Redmond's  constitutionalism  for   timidity. 

But  in  the  eyes  of  the  world  and  of  Ireland  generally, 
Redmond  was  just  as  much  as  Sir  Edward  Carson  the 
accredited  and  accepted  leader  of  his  Volunteer  organi- 
zation, and  to  him  the  Volunteers  looked  for  provision 
of  arms  and  equipment.  One  of  his  chief  preoccupations 
in  those  months  was  with  this  matter,  and  it  explains 
his  desire  to  have  the  proclamation  against  the  import 
of  arms  withdrawn.  The  Larne  exploit  had  proved  the 
futility  of  it ;  articles  by  Colonel  Repington  in  The  Times 
testified  to  the  completeness  of  the  provision  which  had 
been  made  for  Ulster.  But  smuggling  is  always  a  costly 
business,  and  Nationalists  were  hampered  by  the  cost. 
More  than  that,  there  was  ground  for  suspicion  that 
the  scales  were  not  equally  weighted  as  between  Ulster 
and  the  rest  of  the  country.  On  June  30th  Redmond 
wrote  a  letter  to  the  Chief  Secretary  repeating  his  case 
for  withdrawal  of  the  proclamation.  It  is  all  memorable, 
but  especially  the  warning  which  concludes  the  following 
passages  from  it : 

"  In  the  South  and  West  of  Ireland,  not  only  are  the 
most  active  measures  being  taken  against  the  importa- 
tion of  arms,  but  many  owners  of  vessels  are  harassed 
unnecessarily. 

"  The  effect  of  this  unequal  working  of  the  proclama- 
tion has  been  grave  amongst  our  people,  and  has  tended 
to  increase  both  their  exasperation  and  their  apprehensions. 

*'  The  apprehensions  of  our  people  are  justified  to  the 
fullest.  They  find  themselves,  especially  in  the  North, 
faced  by  a  large,  drilled,  organized  and  armed  body. 
Furthermore,  the  incident  at  the  Curragh  has  given 
them  the  fixed  idea  that  they  cannot  rely  on  the  Army 
for  protection.  The  possession  of  arms  by  Nationalists 
would,  under  these  circumstances,  be  no  provocation 
for  disorder,   but  a  means  of  preserving  the  peace  by 


120  JOHN   REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

confronting  one  armed  force  ^^ith  another,  not  helpless 
but,  by  being  armed,  fully  able  to  defend  themselves. 

"  Finally,  we  want  to  call  your  most  serious  attention 
to  the  grave  and  imminent  danger  of  a  collision  between 
Nationalists  and  the  police  in  the  effort  to  import  arms. 
The  police  in  the  South  and  West  might  not  be  so  passive 
as  they  were  in  the  recent  affair  at  Larne,  and  there 
might  be  serious  conflicts,  and  even  loss  of  life,  and  from 
this  day  forward  every  day  Avhich  the  proclamation  is 
enforced  as  strictly  as  it  is  now  against  the  Nationalists 
brings  increased  danger  of  disastrous  collision  between 
the  police  and  the  people." 

Within  a  fortnight  a  minor  incident  illustrated  the 
"  unequal  working  "  referred  to  in  the  first  of  these  points. 
General  Richardson,  who  commanded  the  Ulster  Force, 
had  issued  on  July  1st  an  order  authorizing  all  Ulster 
Volunteers  to  carry  arms  openly  and  to  resist  any  attempt 
at  interference.  In  Ulster  accordingly  no  search  was 
ever  attempted.  But  on  July  15th  Mr.  Lawrence  Kettle, 
brother  to  Professor  Kettle,  who  had  from  the  first  been 
a  prominent  official  of  the  Volunteers,  was  returning  in 
his  motor  from  the  electric  works  at  the  Pigeon  House  ; 
he  was  stopj^ed  by  the  police  and  his  car  searched  for 
arms.  Such  an  occurrence  in  Ulster  would  have  been 
held  to  justify  immediate  rebellion,  and  would  have  been 
carefully  avoided.  In  Dublin  there  was  no  such  avoidance 
of  provocation. 

Yet  the  avoidance  of  anything  which  might  precipitate 
strife  was  indeed  in  these  days  most  desirable.  June  28th 
saw  the  murder  of  the  Archduke  at  Sarajevo.  The 
European  sky  grew  rapidly  overcast.  Days  passed,  and 
the  possibility  of  civil  war  was  exchanged  for  the  near 
probability  of  European  war  which  might  find  the  British 
Empire  divided  against  itself. 

It  was  necessary  in  the  highest  interests  of  State  for 
the  Government  to  make  an  effort  to  compose  the  cause 
of  so  much  violent  faction,  which  might  at  any  moment 


THE  RIVAL  VOLUNTEER  FORCES         121 

assume  acute  form.  The  Amending  Bill,  introduced  in 
the  House  of  Lords  with  the  Government's  offer  embodied 
in  it,  had  been  altered  by  the  Peers  in  a  manner  which 
Lord  Morley  described  as  tantamount  to  rejection.  In 
this  shape  it  was  to  come  before  the  House  of  Commons 
on  July  20th.  But  on  that  Monday,  when  the  House 
reassembled  after  the  weekly  holiday,  the  Prime  Minister 
rose  at  once  and  announced  in  tones  of  no  ordinary 
solemnity  that  the  King  had  thought  it  right  to  summon 
representatives  of  parties  both  British  and  Irish  to  a 
Conference  next  day  at  Buckingham  Palace,  over  which 
Mr.  Speaker  would  preside. 

Redmond  in  two  brief  sentences  guarded  his  attitude. 
He  disclaimed  all  responsibility  for  tlie  policy  of  calling 
the  Conference  and  expressed  no  opinion  as  to  its  chances 
of  success.  The  invitation  had  reached  him  and  Mr. 
Dillon  in  the  form  of  a  command  from  the  King,  and  as 
such  they  had  accepted  it. 

Some  may  remember  how  radiantly  fine  were  those 
far-off  days  in  July  which  led  us  up  to  the  brink  of  such 
undreamt-of  happenings.  On  the  Tuesday  night  I  was 
sitting  alone  on  the  Terrace,  when  Redmond  came  out. 
For  once,  he  was  in  a  mood  to  talk.  His  mind  was  full 
of  the  strangeness  and  interest  of  that  first  day's  Confer- 
ence— a  council,  or  parley,  so  momentous,  so  unprece- 
dented. It  touched  what  was  very  strong  in  him — the 
historic  imagination.  He  told  me  how  the  King  had 
received  them  all,  stayed  with  them  for  some  intercourse 
of  welcome,  and  had  been  specially  marked  in  his  courtesy 
to  Redmond  himself,  who  had  of  course  never  before 
been  presented  to  him.  Then,  he  had  accompanied 
them  to  the  room  set  apart  for  their  deliberations  and 
had  left  them  with  their  chairman,  the  Speaker.  When 
I  think  over  Redmond's  description  of  the  Sovereign's 
personality,  it  seems  to  me  that  he  was  describing  one  so 
paralysed,  as  it  were,  by  anxiety  as  to  have  lost  the 
power   of   easy,    genial    and    natural    speech.      But    the 


122  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

dominant  thought  in  his  mind  did  not  concern  King 
George.  One  figure  stood  out — Sir  Edward  Carson. 
"  As  an  Irishman,"  Redmond  said,  "  you  could  not  help 
being  proud  to  see  how  he  towered  above  the  others. 
They  simply  did  not  count.     He  took  charge  absolutely." 

As  I  gathered,  the  eight  members  sat  four  on  each 
side  of  a  long  table,  with  the  Speaker  at  the  head.  The 
Irish  leaders  were  on  his  right  and  left,  and  the  discussion 
was  chiefly  between  them. 

It  turned  mainly  on  the  question  of  the  area  to  be 
excluded.  Enormous  trouble  had  been  taken,  and  Red- 
mond told  me  later  that  a  great  map  in  relief  had  been 
constructed,  showing  the  distribution  of  Protestant  and 
Catholic  population.  This  brought  out  with  astonishing 
vividness  the  contrast :  the  Catholics  were  on  the  mountains 
and  hill-tops,  the  Protestants  down  along  the  valley  lands. 

Nothing  could  be  more  cordial,  Redmond  said,  than 
Sir  Edward  Carson's  manner  to  him.  They  met  as  old 
friends,  and  I  believe  that  when  they  parted,  one  asked 
the  other  that  they  should  have  "  one  good  shake-hands 
for  the  sake  of  old  times  on  the  Munster  circuit."  But 
it  was  clearly  recognized  that  there  was  a  point  beyond 
which  neither  of  them  could  take  his  followers,  and  these 
points  could  not  be  brought  to  meet.  Even  if  adjustment 
had  been  possible  on  the  question  of  time-limit,  neither 
would  give  up  the  debatable  counties,  Tyrone  and 
Fermanagh,  in  which  the  Nationalists  had  a  clear  though 
small  majority  of  the  population,  but  in  which  the  Ulster 
Volunteer  organization  was  very  strong.  On  Friday,  July 
24th,  Mr.  Asquith  announced  the  failure  of  the  attempt. 
*'  The  possibility  of  defining  an  area  for  exclusion  from 
the  operation  of  the  Government  of  Ireland  Bill  was  con- 
sidered, and  the  Conference  being  unable  to  agree  either 
in  principle  or  in  detail  on  such  an  area,  it  concluded." 

An  incident  which  did  not  lack  significance  was  that 
on  the  second  day  of  these  meetings  Redmond,  returning 
with  Mr.  Dillon  along  Birdcage  Walk  to  the  House,  was 


THE  RIVAL  VOLUNTEER   FORCES  123 

recognized  by  some  Irish  Guards  in  the  barracks,  who 
raised  a  cheer  for  the  NationaHst  leaders  which  ran  all 
along  the  barrack  square.  The  Army  was  not  all  disposed 
to  take  sides  with  Ulster  and  against   the  Nationalists. 

But  parts  of  it  were.  The  collision  between  forces  of 
the  Crown  and  Irish  Volunteers  trying  to  land  arms, 
which  Redmond  had  foretold  and  deprecated  in  his  letter 
of  June  30th,  was  fated  to  occur. 

On  Saturday,  July  25th,  five  thousand  Ulster  Volunteers, 
fully  armed,  with  four  machine  guns — in  short,  an  infantry 
brigade  equii^ped  for  active  service — marched  through 
the  streets  of  Belfast,  no  one  interfering.  On  Sunday, 
the  26th,  a  private  yacht  sailed  into  Howth  harbour 
with  eleven  hundred  rifles  on  board  and  some  boxes  of 
ammunition.  By  preconcerted  arrangement  a  body  of 
some  seven  hundred  Irish  Volunteers  had  marched  down 
to  meet  the  yacht.  These  men  took  the  rifles,  and  with 
them  set  out  to  march  back  in  column  of  route  to  Dublin. 
Two  thousand  rounds  of  ammunition  were  with  them  in 
a  truck-cart,  but  none  was  distributed. 

Meanwhile  the  telephones  had  been  busy.  The  Assistant- 
Commissioner  of  Dublin  Police,  Mr.  Harrel,  an  energetic 
officer,  was  informed,  and  he  acted  instantly.  The 
Under-Secretary,  permanent  official  head  of  Dublin  Castle, 
was  at  his  Lodge  in  the  Phoenix  Park  some  two  miles 
distant  :  Mr.  Harrel  informed  him  of  what  was  happening 
and  was  ordered  to  meet  him  at  the  Castle.  But  Mr.  Harrel 
was  not  content  to  delay.  He  called  out  what  police  he 
could  muster,  some  hundred  and  eighty  men,  and  judging 
that  they  would  be  insufficient,  decided  on  his  own 
authority  to  requisition  the  military.  At  the  Kildarc 
Street  Club  he  found  the  Brigadier-General  in  command 
of  the  troops  in  Dublin,  and  this  officer  immediately 
ordered  out  a  company  of  the  King's  Own  Scottish 
Borderers.  With  this  force  of  soldiers  and  police  Mr. 
Harrel  proceeded  to  a  point  on  the  road  from  Howth 
to  Dublin   and   blocked  the    way.     When  the   body  of 


124  JOHN  REDMONDS  LAST   YEARS 

Volunteers  reached  him,  he  demanded  the  .surrender  of 
their  rifles.  This  was  refused.  He  then  ordered  the 
police  to  disarm  the  men.  A  scuffle  followed,  in  which 
nineteen  rifles  were  seized.  Some  of  the  Volunteers 
without  orders  fired  revolvers,  and  by  this  firing  two 
soldiers  were  slightly  wounded.  One  Volunteer  received 
a  slight  bayonet  wound. 

Then  there  was  a  stop  and  a  parley,  and  the  Volunteer 
leaders  threatened  to  distribute  ammunition.  While  the 
parley  lasted  the  Volunteers  in  rear  of  the  column  dis- 
persed, carrying  their  rifles,  leaving  only  a  couple  of  ranks 
drawn  across  the  road  in  front,  Mho  blocked  the  view. 
When  Mr.  Harrel  perceived  what  Avas  happening,  he 
ordered  the  soldiers  to  march  back  to  Dublin  and  took 
the  police  with  him. 

By  this  time  wild  rumours  had  spread  through  the 
city,  and  on  the  way  back  the  troops  were  mobbed.  They 
were  pelted  Avith  every  kind  of  missile  and  many  Avere 
hurt,  though  none  .seriously ;  and  it  understates  the 
truth  to  say  that  they  AA^ere  in  no  danger.  They  had 
their  bayonets,  and  from  time  to  time  made  thrusts  at 
their  assailants.  At  last,  on  the  quays,  at  a  place  called 
Bachelor's  W^alk,  the  company  Avas  halted,  and  the  officer 
in  command  intended,  if  necessary,  to  give  an  order  for 
a  few  individual  men  to  fire  over  the  heads  of  the  croAvd. 
But  the  troops  had  lost  their  temper,  and  Avithout  order 
given  a  considerable  number  fired  into  the  croAvd.  Three 
persons  Avere  killed  and  some  thirty  injured. 

The  first  that  I  knew  of  these  events  Avas  on  the  Monday, 
when  I  got  the  paper  at  a  station  in  Gloucestershire,  on 
my  Avay  to  the  House.  The  raihvay-carriage  was  full 
of  casual  English  people,  and  I  have  never  heard  so  much 
indignant  comment  on  any  piece  of  news.  "  Why  should 
they  shoot  the  people  in  Dublin  Avhen  they  let  the  Ulster- 
men  do  Avhat  they  like  ?  "  That  AA'as  the  burden  of  it. 
It  is  easy  to  guess  what  was  felt  and  thought  and  said 
in  Dublin  and  throughout  Ireland. 


THE   RIVAL  VOLUNTEER   FORCES  125 

What  Redmond  said  in  the  House  of  Commons  is  char- 
acteriytic  of  his  attitude.  He  demanded  that  full  judicial 
and  military  inquiry  into  the  action  of  the  troops  should 
be  held,  and  that  proper  punishment  should  be  inflicted 
on  those  found  guilty. 

"  But,"  he  said,  "  really  the  responsibility  rests  upon 
those  who  requisitioned  the  troops  under  these  circum- 
stances. So  far  as  the  troops  are  concerned,  I  deplore 
more  than  I  can  say  that  this  has  occurred — this  incident 
calculated  to  breed  bad  blood  between  the  Irish  jieople 
and  the  troops.  I  deplore  that.  I  hope  that  our  people 
will  not  be  so  unjust  as  to  hold  the  troops  generally  respon- 
sible for  what,  no  doubt,  taking  it  at  its  worst,  was  the 
offence  of  a  limited  number  of  men." 

I  do  not  think  any  soldier  could  have  wished  for  a 
fairer  or  more  friendly  statement ;  and  a  chance  assisted 
to  realize  his  hope  that  the  troops  generally  would  not 
be  held  responsible.  One  of  the  killed  was  a  woman 
whose  son  was  a  Dublin  Fusilier.  This  man  published 
a  letter  in  the  Press  calling  on  all  Dublin  Fusiliers  and 
all  soldiers  who  sympathized  with  him  to  attend  the 
funeral.  It  was  well  that  the  populace  should  feel  on 
such  a  matter  as  this  that  all  the  troops  were  not  against 
them  ;  and  well  that  they  should  be  counselled  by  the 
leader  of  their  nation  to  be  reasonable  in  the  direction 
of  their  resentment. 

This  whole  incident  should  never  be  forgotten  by  those 
who  are  disposed  to  judge  the  Irish  harshly  for  what 
they  did,  and  did  not  do,  in  the  succeeding  years.  Above 
all,  it  should  be  remembered  that  the  news  of  it,  terribly 
provocative  in  itself  to  any  people,  but  tenfold  pro- 
vocative by  reason  of  the  contrast  which  it  revealed  as 
compared  with  the  treatment  of  Ulster,  was  published  to 
the  world  less  than  ten  days  before  Redmond  had  to 
face  the  question,  What  should  Ireland  do  in  the  war  ? 


CHAPTER   V 
WAR  IN   EUROPE 


rriHE  week  which  began  on  Monday,  July  27th,  was 
__L  feverish  and  excited.  Formal  discussion  on  the 
occurrences  at  Clontarf  and  Bachelor's  Walk  was  confined 
to  the  Monday  ;  but  each  day  had  a  stormy  scene  during 
question-time  arising  out  of  it.  The  Amending  Bill  from 
the  Lords  was  to  have  been  taken  on  Tuesday,  but  Mr. 
Asquith  postponed  it  till  Thursday,  to  get  a  calmer  atmo- 
sphere. When  Thursday  came,  it  was  postponed  again 
and  indefinitely.  "  We  meet,"  said  the  Prime  Minister, 
"  under  conditions  of  gravity  which  are  almost  unparalleled 
in  the  experience  of  any  one  of  us."  It  was  therefore 
necessary  to  "  present  a  united  front  and  be  able  to  speak 
and  act  with  the  authority  of  an  undivided  nation." 
To  continue  the  Home  Rule  discussion  must  involve 
the  House  in  acute  controversy  in  regard  to  "  domestic 
differences  whose  importance  to  ourselves  no  one  in  any 
quarter  of  the  House  is  disposed  to  disparage  or  belittle." 
The  Leader  of  the  Opposition  assented.  Two  sentences 
in  his  speech  have  importance.  The  first  laid  it  down 
that  this  postponement  should  not  "  in  any  way  pre- 
judice the  interests  of  any  of  the  parties  to  the  con- 
troversy." The  second  indicated  that  he  spoke  not 
only  for  the  Unionist  party  but  for  Ulster. 

It  is  very  difficult  now,  after  all  that  has  crowded  in 
upon  us,  jading  the  sensitive  recipient  surface  of  memory, 
to  reconstitute  the  frame  of  mind  in  which  we  passed 
those  days.     One  thing  I  clearly  remember,  perhaps  worth 

126 


WAR   IN   EUROPE  127 

noting  for  its  significance.  In  a  division  lobby,  probably 
on  the  Wednesday  night,  I  came  in  touch  with  a  friend, 
then  a  subordinate  member  of  the  Government,  who 
had  been  among  the  keenest  advocates  of  our  cause. 
I  asked  how  he  thought  things  were  going.  My  question 
had  reference  to  our  affairs,  which  had  been  for  so  many 
months  the  dominant  issue  ;  but  he  answered  with 
reference  to  the  European  situation,  as  if  that  alone 
existed.  Looking  back,  it  seems  to  me  strange  that 
one  should  have  been  so  engrossed  in  any  preoccupation 
as  in  reality  to  ignore  the  vast  and  imminent  possibilities . 
Yet,  after  all,  I  believe  my  case  was  typical  of  many. 
For  us  Irish,  this  was  the  crucial  point,  the  climax  of  a 
struggle  which  had  been  intense  and  continuous  now 
for  a  period  of  four  years — which  in  its  wider  sense  had 
gone  on,  with  ebb  and  flow,  yet  always  in  progress  during 
tlie  whole  adult  lifetime  of  our  leader  and  his  principal 
colleagues.  For  more  than  us,  for  scores  of  Labour  men 
and  Liberals,  it  had  become  almost  a  fixed  belief  that 
European  war  was  only  a  nightmare  of  the  imagination. 
War  in  the  Balkans,  war  possibly  in  the  East  of  Europe, 
we  could  think  of  ;  but  war  flinging  the  complex  organi- 
zation, so  potent  yet  so  delicate,  of  great  and  fully  civilized 
States  into  the  melting-pot — that  we  never  reallj'-  believed 
in.  Prophets  of  finance,  prophets  of  the  labour  world, 
had  told  us  the  thing  was  impossible.  Even  our  most 
recent  experience,  the  irruption  of  armed  forces  into  the 
political  arena,  had  contributed  to  fix  in  our  minds  the 
view  that  all  armaments  were  merely  in  terrorem,  part 
of  a  gigantic  game  of  bluff. 

In  a  world  organized  as  was  Europe  in  1914  on  the 
basis  of  universal  military  service,  it  is  dangerous,  not 
only  materially  but  morally  and  intellectually,  to  be  as 
the  people  of  these  islands  were,  segregated  from  all 
military  experience.  We  were  almost  like  children  in 
a  magazine  of  explosives  :  we  knew,  of  course,  that  there 
were  dangerous  substances  about  us  ;    but  we  did  not 


128  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

realize  how  suddenly  and  irretrievably  the  whole  thing 
might  go  off. 

I  do  not  know  how  Redmond  gauged  the  situation. 
But  he  spent  the  end  of  the  week  in  town,  and  must  have 
been  less  unprepared  than  was  one  like  myself,  who  during 
the  Saturday,  Sunday  and  the  Monday  Bank  Holiday 
was  away  in  a  most  peaceful  country-side,  remote  from 
news.  Even  on  the  Tuesday,  the  instant  bearing  on  our 
own  questions  and  our  own  lives  of  what  we  read  in  the 
newspapers  was  not  clear  to  me.  There  was  to  be  a 
debate,  of  course  ;  but  only  when  I  saw  the  attendants 
setting  chairs  on  the  floor  of  tlie  House  itself — a  thing 
which  had  not  been  done  since  Gladstone  introduced 
his  second  Home  Rule  Bill — did  I  grasp  the  fact  that 
something   wholly   unusual   was   expected. 

My  strong  impression  is  that  the  House  as  a  whole  was 
in  great  measure  unprepared  for  what  it  had  to  face. 
You  could  feel  surprise  in  the  air  as  Sir  Edward  Grey 
developed  his  wonderful  sj^eech.  Men,  shaken  away 
from  all  traditional  attitudes,  responded  from  the  depths 
of  themselves  to  an  appeal  which  none  of  us  had  ever 
heard  before. 

Having  failed  to  secure  my  place  on  the  Irish  benches, 
I  was  sitting  on  one  of  the  chairs  close  by  the  Sergeant 
at  Arms,  just  inside  the  bar  of  the  House,  so  that  I  saw 
at  once  both  sides  of  the  assembly  :  there  were  no  parties 
that  day.  The  Foreign  Secretary's  speech,  intensely 
English,  with  all  the  quality  that  is  finest  in  English 
tradition,  clearly  did  not  in  its  opening  stages  carry  the 
House  as  a  whole.  Passages  struck  home,  here  and 
there,  to  men  not  to  parties,  kindling  individual  senti- 
ments. Appeal  to  a  common  feeling  for  France  did  not 
elicit  a  general  response  ;  but  here  and  there  in  every 
quarter  there  were  those  who  leapt  to  their  feet  and 
cheered,  waving  the  papers  that  were  in  their  hands  ; 
and  the  two  figures  that  stand  out  most  vividly  in  ray 
recollection  were   Willie   Redmond,  our  leader's  brother. 


WAR  IN  EUROPE  129 

and    Arthur    Lynch.      We    -were    in     a     very    different 
atmosphere  already  from  the  days  of  the  Boer  War. 

It  was  not  until  the  speaker  reached  in  his  statement 
the  outrage  committed  on  Belgian  neutrality  that  feeling 
manifested  itself  universally.  Appeal  was  made  to  the 
sense  of  honour,  of  fair  play,  of  respect  for  pledges,  by 
a  man  as  well  fitted  to  make  such  an  appeal  as  ever 
addressed  any  audience  ;  and  it  was  the  case  of  Belgium 
that  made  the  House  of  Commons  unanimous. 

Later  in  the  evening  speeches  from  the  Radical  group 
made  it  clear  that  unanimity  was  not  yet  definitive. 
Labour  was  hesitant ;  Germany  had  still  to  complete  Sir 
Edward  Grey's  work.  With  this  disposition  in  England 
itself,  what  was  likely  to  be  the  feeling  in  Ireland  ?  No- 
body, I  think,  expected  that  anything  would  be  said  from 
our  benches.  There  had  been  no  consultation  in  our  party, 
such  as  was  customary  and  almost  obligatory  on  important 
occasions,  I  have  said  before  that  Redmond's  position 
was  by  understanding  and  agreement  that  of  chairman, 
not  of  leader.  Mr.  Dillon,  by  far  the  most  important 
of  his  colleagues,  was  away  in  Ireland.  Anj'^  action  that 
Redmond  took  he  must  take  not  merely  in  an  unusual 
but  in  a  new  capacity,  as  leader,  at  a  great  moment, 
acting  in  his  own  right. 

Neither  had  there  been  any  consultation  between  him 
and  the  Government.  He  knew  only  what  the  general 
public  knew.  Parts  of  Sir  Edward  Grey's  speech  were 
to  him,  as  to  the  other  members  of  the  House,  a  surprise 
at  many  points.  At  one  point  it  certainly  was.  After 
summing  up  the  situation,  first  in  relation  to  France, 
then  in  relation  to  Belgium,  the  Foreign  Secretary,  speaking 
with  tlie  utmost  gravity,  foretold  for  Great  Britain  terrible 
suffering  in  this  war,  "  whether  we  are  in  it  or  whether 
we  stand  aside."  He  made  it  clear  that  the  island  safety 
was  not  unchallengeable  ;  there  could  be  no  pledge  to 
send  an  expeditionary  force  outside  the  kingdom.  Then, 
with  a  sudden  lift  of  his  voice,  he  added  :    "  One  thing  I 

10 


130  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

would  say  :  the  one  bright  spot  in  the  very  dreadful 
situation  is  Ireland.  The  position  in  Ireland — and  this 
I  should  like  to  be  clearly  understood  abroad — is  not  a 
consideration  among  the  things  we  have  to  take  into 
account  now." 

The  history  of  this  passage  is  strange.  All  who  heard 
assumed  that  the  speaker  relied  on  definite  promises. 
Such  a  promise  had  been  given,  from  one  party.  The 
Ulster  leader  had,  with  the  sure  instinct  for  Ulster's 
interest  which  guided  him  throughout,  conveyed  to 
the  Government  through  Mr.  Bonar  Law  an  assurance 
that  they  could  count  on  Lester's  imperial  patriotism. 
Ulster,  so  far  as  pledges  went,  was  the  bright  spot.  Where 
Germany  had  counted  on  finding  trouble  for  Great 
Britain,  no  trouble  would  be  found.  But  Sir  Edward 
Grey  at  that  moment  of  his  career  was  lifted  perhaps 
beyond  himself,  certainl}^  to  the  utmost  range  of  his 
statesmanship.  He  was  a  chief  member  of  the  Ministry 
which  had  brought  to  the  verge  of  complete  statutory 
accomplishment  the  task  which  the  Liberal  party  inherited 
from  Gladstone.  He  knew — his  words  have  been  already 
quoted-— what  Ireland's  gratitude  to  Gladstone  had  been 
even  for  the  unfinished  effort  ;  and  now,  in  this  crucial 
hour,  he  counted  upon  Ireland.  From  LTlster,  which 
had  its  bitter  resentment,  assurances  were  needed  :  but 
if  Ulster  were  contented  to  fall  into  line,  then  all  was 
well  with  Ireland.  Speaking  as  one  who  had  done  his 
part  by  Ireland,  with  the  confidence  that  counts  upon 
full  comradeship  he  assumed  the  generosity  of  Ireland's 
response.  That  did  not  fail  him,  sudden  and  unfore- 
seen though  the  challenge  came — for  it  was  an  appeal 
and  a  challenge  to  Ireland's  generosity. 

When  the  notable  words  concerning  Ireland  were 
spoken,  Redmond  turned  to  the  colleague  who  sat  next 
him,  one  of  his  close  personal  friends,  and  one  of  his  wisest, 
most  moderate  and  most  courageous  counsellors.  He 
said :     "  I'm    thinking    of    saying    something.     Do    you 


WAR  IN  EUROPE  131 

think  I  ought  to  ?  "  Mr.  Hayden  answered,  "  That 
depends  on  what  you  are  going  to  say."  Redmond  said  ^ 
*'  I'm  going  to  tell  them  they  can  take_all  their  tjcoops 
out  of  Ireland  and'we  will  defend  the_country  ourselves." 

InTLat  case,"  said  Mr.  Hayden,  "  you  should  certainly 
speak,"  Redmond  leant  over  to  Mr.  T.  P.  O'Connor, 
who  sat  immediately  below  him,  and  consulted  him  also. 
Mr.  O'Connor  was  against  it.  Though  the  war  had  no 
more  enthusiastic  supporter,  he  thought  the  risk  too 
great.  It  was  just  a  week  and  a  day  since  Redmond 
had  moved  an  adjournment  to  consider  the  occasion 
when  Government  forces  were  turned  out  to  disarm 
Irish  Volunteers,  and  when  troops  fired  without  order 
on  a  Dublin  crowd.  Ireland  was  still  given  over  to  a 
fury  of  resentment,  issuing  not  alone  in  speeches  but  in 
active  warlike  preparation.  On  Sunday,  August  1st, 
memorial  masses  for  the  victims  were  held  up  and  down 
the  country.  In  Belfast  there  was  a  parade  of  four 
thousand  Irish  Volunteers  ;  and  finally,  at  a  point  on 
the  Wicklow  coast,  some  ten  thousand  rifles  were  landed 
and  distributed  in  defiance  of  Government  and  its 
troops.  Now,  forty-eight  hours  after  these  demonstra- 
tions, would  the  Irish  leader  ask  his  countrymen  to 
blot  from  their  minds  and  from  their  hearts  so 
recent  and  so  terrible  a  wound  ?  Would  he  attempt 
to  change  the  whole  direction  of  a  nation's  feeling  ? 
The  boldest  and  the  most  generous  might  well  have 
hesitated.     Redmond  did   not. 

This  is  not  to  say  that  he  spoke  without  full  reflection. 
He  always  thought  far  ahead  ;  and  in  these  tense  days 
of  waiting  upon  rumour,  he  must  have  pondered  deeply 
upon  all  the  possibilities — must  have  had  intuition  of 
what  this  opportunity,  England's  difficulty,  might  mean 
for  Ireland.  Other  minds  were  on  the  same  trail.  In 
the  Dublin  papers  of  that  morning  were  two  letters  of 
moment — one   of   them   from   Sir   Arthur   Conan   Doyle. 

"  The  chief  point  which  has  divided  Protestant  Ulster 


132  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

from  the  rest  of  Ireland,"  he  wrote,  "  is  that  Nationalists 
were  not  loyal  to  the  Empire."  Then,  recalling  briefly 
the  extent  to  which  Irish  Nationalists  had  helped  in 
creating  that  Empire,  he  went  on  :  "  There  is  no  possible 
reason  why  a  man  should  not  be  a  loyal  Irishman  and  a 
loyal  Imperialist  also.  ...  A  whole-hearted  declaration 
of  loyalty  to  the  common  ideal  would  at  the  present 
moment  do  much  to  allay  the  natural  fears  of  Ulster  and 
to  strengthen  the  position  of  Ireland.  Such  a  chance 
is  unlikely  to  recur.  I  pray  that  the  Irish  leaders  may 
understand  its  significance  and  put  themselves  in  a 
position  to  take  advantage  of  it." 

The  other  letter,  written  from  a  different  standpoint, 
was  signed  by  Mr.  M.  J.  Judge,  a  most  active  Irish  Volun- 
teer who  had  been  wounded  in  the  scuffle  on  the  way 
back  from  Howth.  "  England,"  he  said,  "  might  inspire 
confidence  by  restoring  it.  She  could  bestow  confidence 
by  immediately  arming  and  equipping  the  Irish  Volunteers. 
The  Volunteers,  properly  armed  and  equipped,  could 
preserve  Ireland  from  invasion,  and  England  would  be 
free  to  utilize  her  '  army  of  occupation  '  for  the  defence 
of  her  own  shores." 

Redmond  could  not  have  seen  either  of  these  letters, 
but  those  two  trains  of  thought  were  blended  in  his  speech 
— which  was  less  a  speech  than  a  supreme  action.  It 
was  the  utterance  of  a  man  who  has  a  vision  and  who, 
acting  in  the  light  of  it,  seeks  to  embody  the  vision  in  a 
living  reality. 

Mr.  Bonar  Law  followed  Sir  Edward  Grey  with  a  few 
brief  sentences  of  whole-hearted  support.  Then  Redmond 
rose,  and  a  hush  of  expectation  went  over  the  house. 
I  can  see  it  now,  the  crowded  benches  and  the  erect,  solid 
figure  with  the  massive  hawk-visaged  head  thrown  back, 
standing  squarely  at  the  top  of  the  gangway.  While 
he  spoke,  as  during  Sir  Edward  Grey's  speech,  the  cheering 
broke  out  first  intermittently  and  scattered  over  the 
House,    then    grew    gradually    universal.     Sitting    about 


WAR  IN  EUROPE  133 

me  were  Tory  members  whom  I  did  not  know  ;  I  heard 
their  ejaculations  of  bewilderment,  approval  and  delight. 
But  in  the  main  body  of  the  Unionists  behind  the  front 
Opposition  bench  papers  were  being  waved,  and  when 
Redmond  sat  down  many  of  these  men  stood  up  to  cheer 
him.  In  five  minutes  he  had  changed  the  whole  atmosphere 
of  domestic  politics  in  regard  to  the  main  issue  of  contro- 
versy.— Here  is  the  speech  : 

"  I  hope  the  House  will  not  think  me  impertinent 
to  intervene  in  the  debate,  but  I  am  moved  to  do  so  a 
great  deal  by  that  sentence  in  the  speech  of  the  Foreign 
Secretary  in  which  he  said  that  the  one  bright  spot  in 
the  situation  was  the  changed  feeling  in  Ireland.  Sir, 
in  past  time,  when  this  Empire  has  been  engaged  in  these 
terrible  enterprises,  it  is  true  that  it  would  be  the  utmost 
affectation  and  folly  on  my  part  to  deny  that  the  sympathies 
of  Nationalist  Ireland,  for  reasons  deep  down  in  the 
centuries  of  history,  have  been  estranged  from  this  country. 
But  allow  me  to  say  that  what  has  occurred  in  recent 
years  has  altered  the  situation  completely.  I  must  not 
touch  upon  any  controversial  topic,  but  this  I  may  be 
allowed  to  say — that  a  wider  knowledge  of  the  real  facts 
of  Irish  history  has  altered  the  view  of  the  democracy 
of  this  country  towards  the  Irish  question,  and  I  honestly 
believe  that  the  democracy  of  Ireland  will  turn  with 
the  utmost  anxiety  and  sympathy  to  this  country  in 
every  trial  and  danger  with  which  she  is  faced.  ---' 

"  There  is  a  possibility  of  history  repeating  itself.  The 
House  will  remember  that  in  1778,  at  the  end  of  the 
disastrous  American  War,  when  it  might  be  said  that 
the  military  force  of  this  country  was  almost  at  its  lowest 
ebb,  the  shores  of  Ireland  were  threatened  with  invasion. 
Then  a  hundred  thousand  Irish  Volunteers  sprang  into 
existence  for  the  purpose  of  defending  those  shores.  At 
first,  however — and  how  sad  is  the  reading  of  the  history 
of  those  days  !  no  Catholic  was  allowed  to  be  enrolled  in 
that  body  of  Volunteers ;  yet  from  the  first  day  the  Catholics 


134  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

of  the  South  and  West  subscribed  their  money  and  sent 
it  for  the  army  of  their  Protestant  fellow-countrymen. 
Ideas  widened  as  time  went  on,  and  finally  the  Catholics 
of  the  South  were  armed  and  enrolled  as  brothers-in-arms 
with  their  fellow-countrymen.  May  history  repeat  itself  ! 
To-day  there  are  in  Ireland  two  large  bodies  of  Volunteers, 
one  of  which  has  sprung  into  existence  in  the  North  and 
another  in  the  South.  I  say  to  the  Government  that 
they  may  to-morrow  withdraw  every  one  of  their  troops 
from  Ireland.  Ireland  will  be  defended  by  her  armed 
sons  from  invasion,  and  for  that  purpose  the  armed 
Catholics  in  the  South  will  be  only  too  glad  to  join  arms 
with  the  armed  Protestant  Ulstermen.  Is  it  too  much 
to  hope  that  out  of  this  situation  a  result  may  spring 
which  will  be  good,  not  merely  for  the  EmpirCj  but  for 
^tlie  future  welfare  and  integrity  of  the  Irish  nation  ? 
Whilst  Irishmen  are  in  favour  of  peace  and  would  desire 
to  save  the  democracy  of  this  country  from  all  the  horrors 
of  war,  whilst  we  will  make  any  possible  sacrifice  for  that 
purpose,  still,  if  the  necessity  is  forced  upon  this  country, 
we  offer  this  to  the  Government  of  the  day  :  They  may 
take  their  troops  away,  and  if  it  is  allowed  to  us,  in 
comradeship  with  our  brothers  in  the  North,  we  will 
ourselves  defend  the  shores  of  Ireland." 

It  needed  no  gift  of  prophecy  to  be  certain  that  such 
a  speech  would  be  popular  in  the  House  of  Commons, 
and  many  Unionists  that  day  were  almost  aggrieved 
that  Sir  Edward  Carson  had  not  risen  at  once  to  reply 
to  the  offer  in  the  same  spirit.  They  did  not  realize  the 
difficulty  of  the  Ulster  leader's  position.  To  admit  and 
welcome  the  unity  of  Ireland  was  to  give  away  Ulster's 
case.  To  accept  the  Nationalist  leader's  utterance  as 
sincere,  still  more  to  assume  that  Ireland  as  a  whole 
would  endorse  it,  was  to  weaken,  if  not  to  give  away, 
Ulster's  best  argument,  and  from  that  hour  to  the  end 
of  the  war  Sir  Edward  Carson  was  most  loyal  to  Ulster's 
interests. 


WAR   IN   EUROPE  135 

Further,  it  is  conceivable  that  by  some  who  cheered 
it  the  speech  may  have  been  misunderstood.  Yet  it  is 
not  probable  that  many  who  heard  Redmond  believed 
that  in  order  to  serve  England  he  was  flinging  away 
Ireland's  national  claim,  to  the  successful  furtherance 
of  which  his  whole  life  had  been  devoted.  The  Unionist 
party  as  a  whole  certainly  understood  tirair°toaccept 
^K^mond's  offer  in  the  spirjt  in  which  it  was  made  meant 
accepting  the  principle  of  Home  Rule:  and  on  that 
afternoon  in  August  they  were  not  unready  to  accept  it. 
They  felt,  for  the  speech  made  them  feel,  that  a  great 
thing  had  happened.  Yet  they  might  well  be  pardoned 
for  some  scepticism  as  to  how  the  utterance  might  be 
taken  in  Ireland,  and  how  it  would  issue  in  action.  A 
famous  Nationalist  said  some  ten  days  later  :  *'  When 
I  read  the  speech  in  the  paper,  I  was  filled  with  dismay. 
Now  I  recognize  that  it  was  a  great  stroke  of  statesman- 
ship which  I  should  never  have  had  the  courage  to 
advise." 

Redmond's  instinct  had  been  right.  He  trusted  in 
the  appeal  to  national  pride  and  to  the  sense^rn&rtiohal"'~='' 
.j^ty."  Ireland  was  perfectly  willing,  and  he  knew  it,  to 
give  loyal  friendship  to  England  on  the  basis  of  freedom. 
But  the  test  of  freedom  had  now  come  to  be  the  right  to 
bear  arms,  and  this  was  a  proposal  that  Ireland  should 
undertake  her  own  defence.  Ireland  was  sick  of  the 
talk  of  civil  war,  and  this  was  a  proposal  that  Ulstermen 
and  the  rest  should  make  common  cause.  It  was  an 
appeal  addressed  by  an  instinct,  which  was  no  less  subtle 
than  it  was  noble,  to  what  was  most  responsive  in  the 
best  qualities  of  Irishmen.  None  the  less  it  was  a  states- 
man's utterance  addressed  to  a  people  politically  quick- 
minded  ;  Ireland  saw  as  well  as  Redmond  himself  that 
what  stood  in  the  way  of  Ireland's  national  aspiration 
was  the  opposition  of  one  section  of  Irishmen.  To  that 
extent,  and  to  that  extent  only,  was  the  speech  political 
in  its  purpose.    .Whatever  made  for  common  action  made"^ 

i 


136  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

for  unity  ;  and  whatever  made  for  unity  made  for  Home 
Rule.  That  is  the  key  to  Redmond's  attitude  throughout 
the   war — perhaps  also   to   Sir  Edward  Carson's. 


II 

The  response  from  Nationalist  Ireland  had  not  long 
to  be  waited  for — although  the  inquest  on  the  victims 
of  the  Bachelor's  Walk  tragedy  was  in  progress  on  the 
very  day  when  Redmond's  speech  appeared  in  the  Press. 
Waterford  Corporation  instantly  endorsed  their  member's 
utterance,  and  throughout  the  week  similar  resolutions 
were  passed  all  over  the  country,  Unionist  members  of 
these  bodies  joining  in  to  second  the  proposals.  In  Cork, 
the  City  Council  had  before  it  a  resolution  condemning 
the  Government  for  its  attempt  to  disarm  the  Irish 
Volunteers,  and  calling  for  stringent  penalties  on  the 
offenders  in  the  Bachelor's  Walk  affair  :  the  resolution 
was  withdrawn  and  one  of  hearty  support  to  Redmond's 
attitude  adopted. 

Yet  Irish  opinion  did  not  go  so  far  as  Mr.  William , 
O'Brien,  who  proposed  the  complete  dropping  of  the 
TlOTile  Rule  Bill  till  after  the  war,  in  order  to  bring  about 
a  genuine  national  unity.  The  action  of  the  Offaly  corps 
of  Volunteers,  for  instance,  was  typical.  They  agreed 
to  offer  their  services  gladly  on  two  conditions  :  first, 
that  the  Home  Rule  Bill  should  go  on  the  Statute  Book  ; 
secondly,  that  the  Volunteers  should  be  subsidized  and 
equipped  by  Government. 

But  it  was  assumed  in  Ireland  that  no  question  arose 
about  the  safety  of  the  Bill,  and  people  gave  themselves 
to  the  new  emotion.  Troops  were  cheered  everywhere 
at  stations  and  on  the  quays  :  National  Volunteers  and 
local  bands  turned  out  to  see  them  off.  Even  the  battalion 
of  King's  Own  Scottish  Borderers,  which  had  been  confined 


WAR  IN  EUROPE  137 

to  barracks  since  the  events  of  July  26th,  was  cheered 
like  the  rest  as  it  marched  down  to  the  transports  ready 
for  it.i 

This  was  the  attitude  of  the  general  populace.  Broadly 
speaking,  Redmond's  speech  pleased  the  people.  It 
was  welcomed  by  generous-minded  men  in  another  class,_^ 
'"who"responded  at  once  in  the  same  spirit.  Lord  Monteagle 
wrote  :~  "~Mr.  Redmond  has  risen  nobly  to  the  occasion  "  ; 
Lord  Bessborough,  that  he  trusted  all  the  Unionists  in 
the  South  would  at  once  join  the  Irish  Volunteers.  The 
Marquis  of  Headfort,  the  Earls  of  Fingall  and  of  Desart, 
Lord  Powerscourt,  Lord  Langford,  all  chimed  in  with 
offers  of  help.  Mr.  George  TaafEe  WTote  :  "I  thank 
God  from  the  bottom  of  my  heart  that  to-day  we 
stand  united  Ireland."  In  county  Wexford  sixty  young 
Protestants  came  in  a  body  to  join  up,  led  by  a  very 
Tory  squire. 

It  should  be  clearly  noted  that  while  Redmond's  aim 
was  to  make  this  Ireland's  war,  in  which  Irishmen  should 
serve  together  without  distinction  of  North  or  South, 
all  that  he  asked  of  the  land  in  his  speech  of  August  4th 
was  that  the  Volunteers  should  undertake  duties  of  home 
defence.  This  was  precisely  what  Sir  Edward  Carson 
had  asked  of  Ulster.  On  August  14th,  in  a  letter  to  the 
Press,  the  commander  of  a  Fermanagh  battalion  of  Ulster 
Volunteers  wTote  :  "  No  one  will  be  asked  to  serve  outside 
Ulster  until  Sir  Edward  Carson  notifies  that  he  is  satisfied 

I  Tliis  fact  was  verified  for  me  oddly  enoiigh.  When  the  16th 
Division  went  to  France,  it  was  put  through  the  usual  period  of 
apprenticeship  with  trained  troops,  and  our  brigade  was  attached 
for  training  to  the  Scottish  Fifteenth  Division.  Two  companies 
of  our  battalion  of  the  6th  Connaught  Rangers  were  attached  to 
the  8th  and  9th  K.O.S.B.  I  met  two  officers  who  had  been  in 
Dublin  on  July  26th,  and  it  was  one  of  these  who  told  me  of  the 
cheering.  Perhaps  I  may  add  that  the  relations  between  our 
Cormaught  Rangers  and  the  Scots  were  most  friendly,  and  that 
we  found  probably  a  hundred  Irish  Catholics  in  that  battalion — 
Irishmen  living  in  the  North  of  England  %\ho  had  at  once  rushed 
to  enlist  in  the  nearest  corps  available. 


138  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

with  the  attitude  of  the  Government  with  regard  to  the 
Home  Rule  Bill  and  Ulster." 

Redmond  neither  could  nor  did  ask  any  man  to  serve 
outside  Ireland  till  he  was  satisfied  with  the  Government's 
attitude  in  regard  to  Home  Rule.  In  the  first  days  of 
the  war,  however,  the  critical  question  for  him  was  to 
know  how  his  offer  of  assistance  from  the  Volunteers 
would  be  accepted  by  the  Government,  and  at  the  outset 
all  promised  favourably.  On  August  8th  a  telegram 
was  sent  to  the  Lord-Lieutenant : 

"  His  Majesty's  Government  recognize  with  deep  grati- 
tude the  loyal  help  which  Ireland  has  offered  in  this 
grave  hour.  They  hope  to  announce  as  soon  as  possible 
arrangements  by  which  this  offer  can  be  made  use  of  to 
the  fullest  possible  extent." 

That  unquestionably  represented  the  mind  of  Mr.  Asquith 
and  his  civilian  colleagues.  But  a  new  power  had  trans- 
formed the  Cabinet,  Lord  Kitchener,  refusing  to  accept 
the  post  of  Commander  in  Chief,  had  insisted  on  becoming 
Secretary  of  State  for  War. 

No  one  is  likely  to  underestimate  Lord  Kitchener's 
value  at  that  hour.  But  probably  no  one  now  will  dispute 
that  the  political  control  which  this  soldier  obtained  was 
excessive  and  was  dangerous.  Years  of  fierce  faction 
had  shaken  the  public  confidence  in  politicians,  and  a 
soldier  was  traditionally  above  and  beyond  politics. 
But  in  Lord  Kitchener's  case  the  soldier  was  certainly 
remote  from  and  below  the  regions  of  statesmanship. 
Narrow,  domineering,  and  obstinate,  he  was  a  difficult 
colleague  for  anyone  ;  and  for  a  Prime  Minister  with  so 
easy  a  temper  as  Mr.  Asquith  he  was  not  a  colleague  but 
a  master.  He  claimed  to  be  supreme  in  all  matters  relating 
to  the  Army,  and  in  such  a  war  this  came  near  to  covering 
the  whole  field  of  government.  It  most  certainly  covered 
the  question  of  dealing  with  the  Irish  Volunteers  and 
with  the  Ulster  Volunteers,  which  meant  in  reality  the 
whole  question  of  Ireland. 


WAR  IN  EUROPE  139 

Immediately  on  Lord  Kitchener's  appointment  Redmond 
had  an  interview  with  him.  Redmond's  report  was 
that  he  had  been  most  friendly — and  most  limited  in 
his  expectations.  "  Get  me  five  thousand  men,  and  I 
will  say  '  Thank  you,'  "  he  had  said.  "  Get  me  ten 
thousand,  and  I  will  take  of!  my  hat  to  you."  Yet  the 
very  smallness  of  the  estimate  should  have  been  a  note 
of  warning  to  us  ;  it  indicated  a  cynical  view  of  Ireland's 
response  to  Redmond's  public  declaration. 

On  the  question  of  the  Volunteers  he  made  friendly 
promises.  As  the  Sirdar  in  Egypt  he  had  been  used  to 
giving  fair  words  to  native  chiefs.  There  is  not  the  least 
reason  to  suppose  that  Lord  Kitchener  would  have  felt 
bound  to  show  Redmond  his  real  mind.  •— -««.-^ 

The   truth   was   that   Lord  Kitchener   held  in   respect  \ 
to  Ireland  the  traditional  opinions  of  the  British  Army.  \ 
Nobody  could  blame   the  professional  soldier  for  dislike    \ 
and   distrust  of   Irish  Nationalist   politicians  generally  ;    \ 
but  when  at  such  a  crisis  a  professional  soldier,  by  no  means     \ 
conspicuous  for  breadth  of  mind,  came  to  hold  such  a     \ 
position  as  Lord  Kitchener  seized,  the  result  was  certain     j 
to   be   disastrous  for  Irish  policy  unless   Liberal  states-     | 
manship   exercised   a  strong  control   over   him.     Neither    I 
Mr.  Asquith  nor  Mr.    Birrell  was  likely  to  do   this.   _  ,     | 

Two  views  were  taken  of  the  proposal  to  encourage 
and  utilize  the  Irish  Volunteers.  The  first  view  was  that 
Volunteers  of  any  kind  were  a  superfluous  encumbrance 
at  a  moment  when  the  supreme  need  was  for  men  in  the 
actual  fighting-line  ;  that  encouragement  of  Volunteers 
gave  an  excuse  for  shirking  war ;  and  further,  that 
Volunteers  outside  the  State's  control  were  a  danger ; 
that  the  danger  was  increased  when  there  were  two  rival 
Volunteer  forces  which  might  fly  at  each  other's  throats  ; 
and  that  it  was  a  matter  for  satisfaction  that  one  of  these 
forces  should  be  very  greatly  inferior  to  the  other  in 
point  of  arms  and  equipment,  so  that  considerations  of 
prudence    would    lessen    the    chance    of    collision.     This 


140  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

satisfaction  was  greatly  heightened  by  the  reflection 
that  the  armed  force  was  thoroughly  loyal  to  the  Empire 
and  could  be  trusted  to  assist  troops  in  the  case  of  any 
attack  upon  the  Empire  begun  by  the  other — a  contingency 
which  should  always  be  taken  into  account. 

This  line  of  thought  was  certainly  Lord  Kitchener's. 
He  had  no  distrust  of  Irish  soldiers  in  ordinary  regiments  ; 
no  professional  soldier  ever  had.  But  he  had  a  jdeep 
distrust  of  a  purely  Irish  military  organization  under 
Irish^contfol,  At  tlie  back  of  Lord  Kitchener's  mind 
was  the  determination  "  I  will  not  arm  enemies."  _This 
was  the  very  negation  and  the  aniilhesis  of  the  second 
view,~wKich  was  Redmond's. 

"" '^edinond's  aim  was  to  win  the  war,  no  less  than  Lord 
Kitchener's.     But  if  Lord  Kitchener  realized  more  clearly 
than  other  men    in   power   how   far-reaching   would    be 
the   need    for   troops,   Redmond   realized    also  far  more 
than    the    men    in    power    how    vital     would     be    the 
need    for    America.      He   saw   from    the   first,    knowing 
the    English-speaking    world   far  more  widely  than    per- 
haps  any  member    of    the    Government,   that   the  Irish 
trouble   could   not   limit    its   influence    to   Ireland    only. 
Greater  forces  could  be  conciliated  for  war  purposes  by 
"feconciliation    with    Ireland — by    bringing    Ireland    heart 
and   soul   into   the   war — than   the   equivalent   of   many 
regiments.     Yet  even  from  the  narrower  aspect  of  finding 
men7~lie    regarded    the    same    policy    as    essential.     He 
assumed  that  recruiting  in  Ireland  must  always  be  volun- 
tary— at  any  rate  a  matter  for  Ireland's  own  decision  : 
the    question   was    how   to   get    most   troops.     Knowing 
Ireland,  he  recognized  how  complete  was  the  estrangement 
of  its  population  from  the  idea  of  ordinary  enlistment. 
The  bulk  of  the  population  were  on  the  land,   and  in 
Ireland,  as  in  Great  Britain,   "  gone  for  a  soldier  "  was 
a  word  of  disgrace  for  a  farmer's  son.     More  than  that, 
the  political  organization  of  which  he  was  head  had  in- 
culcated an  attitude  of  aloofness  from  the  Army  because 


WAR   IN  EUROPE  141 

it  was  the  Army  which  held  Ireland  by  force.  Enlistment 
had  been  discouraged,  on  the  principle  that  from  a  military 
point  of  view  Ireland  was  regarded  as  a  conquered  country. 
A  test  case  had  arisen  over  the  Territorial  Act,  which 
was  not  extended  to  Ireland,  any  more  than  the  Volun- 
teer Acts  had  been.  We  had  voted  against  Lord  Haldane's 
Bill  on  the  express  ground  that  it  put  Ireland  into  this 
status  of  inferiority  and  withheld  from  Irishmen  that 
right  to  arm  and  drill  which  was  pressed  upon  English- 
men as  a  patriotic  duty.  We  had  explicitly  declared 
then  in  1907  that  our  influence  should  and  must  be  used 
against  enlistment. 

These  facts  of  history  had  not  merely  produced  in 
Ireland  an  attitude  of  mind  hostile  to  the  idea,  so  to  say, 
of  the  British  Army  as  an  institution,  though  the  individual 
soldier  had  always  been  at  least  as  popular  as  anyone 
else.  They  had  produced  a  population  extraordinarily 
unfamiliar  with  the  idea  of  armament.  The  old  Volunteers 
and  the  Territorials  had  at  least  conveyed  to  all  ranks 
of  society  in  Great  Britain  the  possibility  of  joining  a 
military  organization  while  remaining  an  ordinary  citizen. 
In  the  imagination  of  Ireland,  either  you  were  a  soldier 
or  you  were  not ;  and  if  you  were  a  soldier,  you  belonged 
to  an  exceptional  class,  remote  from  ordinary  existence. 
To  cross  that  line  was  a  far  greater  step  to  contemplate 
with  us  than  in  England.  Redmond  reckoned,  and  reckoned 
rightly,  that  to  bring  Irishmen  together  in  military  forma- 
tions, learning  the  art  of  war,  was  the  best  way  to  combat 
this  disinclination  to  enter  the  Army — this  feeling  tuat 
enlistment  meant  doing  something  "  out  of  the  way," 
something  contrary  to  usage  and  tradition.  He  reckoned 
that  the  attitude  of  Nationalist  Ireland  would  alter  to- 
wards a  Government  which  put  arms  in  their  hands  on 
their  own  terms  ;  and  that  with  a  great  war  on  foot  a 
temper  of  adventure  and  emulation  would  very  soon 
draw  young  men  flocking  to  the  ranks  in  which  they 
could  see  the  reality  of  war.     That  was  Redmond's  policy 


142  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST   YEARS 

and  it  was  the  statesman's.  Nationalist  Ireland  was 
perfectly  ready  to  adopt  the  ideals  which  moved  the 
British  Empire  at  home  and  overseas  in  the  war  :  but 
first  the  British  Empire  must  show  that  it  respected  the 
ideals  of  Nationalist  Ireland.  The  Empire's  statesmen 
did  so  :  the  British  democracy  did  so  :  but  Lord  Kitchener 
stood  in  the  way. 

From  Ulster,  it  was  clear  that  immediate  cordial  co- 
operation could  not  be  anticipated.  Yet  Redmond  had 
implicit  faith  in  the  ultimate  effect  of  comradeship  in 
danger,  and  here  we  know  he  was  right.  He  was  to  pay 
a  heavy  price  in  blood  for  the  seal  set  upon  that  bond ; 
but  in  the  end  the  seal  was  set.  For  the  moment,  Ulster 
as  a  whole  was  sullen  and  distrustful.  Feeling  that  to 
admit  the  good  faith  of  Nationalists  jeopardized  their  own 
political  cause,  they  belittled  what  in  the  interests  of 
the  common  weal  it  would  have  been  wise  even  to  over- 
value. At  the  outset  *'  An  Ulster  Volunteer  "  wrote  to 
the  papers  "  Let  us  all  unite  as  a  solid  nation  "  ;  but  such 
an  utterance  was  exceptional.  Hardly  less  exceptional 
was  the  line  taken  by  "  An  Officer  of  National  Volunteers  " 
who  wrote,  "  If  the  necessity  arose  to-morrow  and  the  word 
went  out  from  Headquarters,  the  National  Volunteers 
would  be  prepared  to  fight  to  the  very  death  in  defending 
the  homes  and  liberties  of  France  and  England."  *'  For 
Ireland  Only  "  was  a  motto  much  inculcated  in  those 
days  among  the  Irish  Volunteers.  Suspicion  on  the  one 
side  bred  estrangement  on  the  other  ;  and  every  hour 
lost  increased  the   mischief. 

Moreover,  in  spite  of  the  generous  action  taken  by 
outstanding  individuals,  the  general  mass  of  Unionist 
opinion  was  grudging  and  uncordial.  A  friend  who  was 
then  closely  in  touch  with  it  described  to  me  the  attitude 
of  Dublin  clubs  :  *'  They  were  almost  sorry  Redmond 
had  done  the  right  thing."  Such  men  were  part  of  Ireland, 
and  all  Ireland  was  remote  from  war.  For  them,  now 
as  always,  Home  Rule  was  the  paramount  consideration, 


WAR   IN   EUROPE  143 

and  none  could  deny  that  the  prospects  for  Home  Rule 
were  immensely  improved  by  Redmond's  action.  In 
these  days,  when  an  end  of  the  conflict  was  expected  in 
three  months,  when  every  check  to  the  Germans  was 
magnified  out  of  all  reason,  there  was  no  sense  of  the 
relative  value  of  issues.  Everywhere  in  Unionist  society 
and  in  the  Irish  Unionist  Press  there  was  ungenerous 
and  unfriendly  criticism  which  did  much  harm. 

Two  things  could  have  checked  these  forces  for  evil. 
The  first  would  have  been  an.  immediate  decision  to  make 
Home  Rule  law.  This  would  have  put  an  end  to  the 
pestilent  growth  of  suspicion  among  Nationalists,  and  it 
would  have  enabled  Redmond  to  launch  at  once  his  appeal 
for  soldiers.  The  other  would  have  been  a  decision  to 
make  good  the  pledge  contained  in  the  Government's 
message  to  Lord  Aberdeen  and  to  accept  in  some  practical 
way  the  offered  service  of  the  Volunteers. 

The  latter  of  these  courses  involved  no  controversy 
with  Ulster,  and  to  it  Redmond  first  addressed  himself. 
He  made  constant  appeals  in  private  to  Ministers  ;  he 
was  angry  and  disappointed  over  the  delay  :  and  after 
a  week  he  thought  it  necessary  to  raise  the  matter  in  the 
House.  He  asked  the  Prime  Minister  whether  British 
Territorials  were  to  be  sent  to  Ireland  to  replace  the 
troops  which  had  been  withdrawn — a  step  which  would 
have  been  equivalent  to  a  rejection  of  his  offer.  On  this 
point  he  received  satisfaction ;  Territorials  would  not 
be  sent.  He  asked  then  if  the  Prime  Minister  could  not 
say  at  once  what  steps  would  be  taken  to  arm  and  equip 
the  Volunteers.  Mr.  Asquith's  reply  emphasized  the 
great  difficulty  which  stood  in  the  way.  *'  I  do  not  say," 
he  added,  "  that  it  is  insuperable."  The  first  part  was  the 
voice  of  Lord  Kitchener  ;  the  second,  the  voice  of  the 
Government  which  had  sent  the  telegram  of  August  8th. 

In  the  War  Office  the  desire  to  give  the  National  Volun- 
teers as  far  as  possible  what  they  wanted  did  not  exist, 
and  the  Government,  who  had  that  desire,  had  not  the 


144  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

determination  to  enforce  it.  Such  a  position  can  never 
be  for  long  concealed.  Let  it  be  remembered,  too,  that 
all  through  these  days  there  was  proceeding  in  Dublin 
a  public  inquiry  into  the  events  of  the  Howth  gun-running 
and  the  affray  at  Bachelor's  Walk,  and  some  measure 
of  Redmond's  difficulties  may  be  obtained. 

Nevertheless,  his  policy  was  winning  :  and  when 
Parliament  rose  for  an  adjournment,  he  spent  his  first 
Sunday  in  Ireland  motoring  to  Maryborough,  where  he 
inspected  a  great  muster  of  Volunteers,  and  was  able  to 
speak  to  them  with  gladness  of  the  response  to  his  appeal. 

"From  every  part  of  Ireland  I  have  had  assurances  from 
the  Irish  Volunteers  that  they  are  ready  to  fulfil  this 
duty  :  and  from  every  part — perhaps  better  and  happier 
still — evidences  of  a  desire  on  the  part  of  men  who  in  the 
past  have  been  divided  from  us  to  come  in  at  this  hour 
of  danger." 

He  told  his  audience  how  a  battalion  of  that  famous 
regiment,  the  Inniskilling  Fusiliers,  had  been  escorted 
through  the  town  of  Enniskillen,  in  which  Orange  and 
Green  have  always  been  equally  and  sharply  divided,  by 
combined  bodies  of  the  Irish  and  Ulster  Volunteer  Forces. 
Then  turning  to  the  question  of  equipment,  and  reminding 
them  that  the  proclamation  against  importing  arms  had 
been  withdrawn,  he  announced  that  he  had  secured 
several  thousand  rifles  to  distribute. ^  He  went  on  then 
to  pledge  himself — it  must  be  said  with  characteristic 
overconfidence — as  to  the  intentions  of  the  Government : 
"  The  Government — which  has  withdrawn  its  troops  from 
Ireland  and  which  has  refused  to  send  English  Territorials 
to  take  their  place — is  about  to  arm,  equip  and  drill  a 
large  number  of  Irish  Volunteers."  Very  soon,  he  told 
them,  every  man  in  the  force  would  have  a  rifle — and  this 
involved  a  grave  responsibility,  and  the  need  for  discipline 
in  the  work  which  was  laid  upon  them. 

^  Bought  in  Belgium  by  John  O'Connor  M.P,  and  T.  M   Kettle, 
after  the  Germans  had  entered  Brussels. 


WAR  IN  EUROPE  145 

"  I  wish  them  God-speed  with  their  work.  It  is  the 
holiest  work  that  men  can  undertake,  to  maintain  the 
freedom  and  the  rights  and  to  uphold  the  peace,  the  order 
and  safety  of  their  own  nation.  You  ought  to  be  proud — 
you,  the  sons  and  the  grandsons  of  men  who  were  shot 
down  for  daring  to  arm  themselves — you  ought  to  be 
proud  that  you  have  lived  to  see  the  day  when  with  the 
good  will  of  the  democracy  of  England  you  are  arming 
yourselves  in  the  light  of  heaven." 

The  note  of  exultation  in  this  passage  rings  again  and 
again  through  his  utterances.  He  saw,  or  thought  he 
saw,  the  symbol  of  achieved  liberty  in  the  muster  of 
young  men,  ready  to  take  up  the  sword,  and  no  longer 
branded  with  the  name  of  felons  for  so  doing.  Nor  was 
he  alone  in  his  rejoicing.  The  host  at  that  meeting  was  a 
great  Irish  landlord.  Colonel  Sir  Hutcheson  Poe.  He, 
upon  reading  Redmond's  speech  of  August  4th  had 
written  to  the  Press  saying  that  since  he  was  too  old  to 
serve  he  was  taking  steps  to  arm  and  equip  a  hundred 
National  Volunteers.  Now,  in  Redmond's  presence,  ad- 
dressing a  body  of  the  Volunteers,  he  told  them  what 
he  thought  of   Redmond's  action. 

"  That  five  minutes'  speech  did  more  to  compose  our 
differences,  to  unite  all  Irishmen  in  a  bond  of  friendship 
and  good  will,  than  could  have  been  accomplished  by 
years  of  agitation  or  by  a  conference,  however  well-inten- 
tioned it  might  be." 

That  was  a  notable  tribute  from  one  of  the  eight  men 
who  formed  the  historic  Land  Conference  of  1902  ;  and 
Sir  Hutcheson  Poe  was  not  the  man  to  rest  on  compli- 
mentary expressions.  He  set  to  work  at  once  to  promote  a 
memorial  praying  for  joint  action  between  Ulster  and  the 
Irish  Volunteers  and  for  settlement  of  the  political  question 
which  alone  prevented  such  action. 

Unhappily,  this  was  not  easy  of  accomplishment.  When 
the  House  reassembled  after  its  adjournment  of  a  fortnight, 
negotiations  were  resumed,  with  the  result  that  on  August 

11 


146  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

31st  the  Prime  Minister  asked  for  a  fresh  adjournment 
for  ten  days,  at  the  end  of  which  time  the  Government 
hoped  to  be  able  to  produce  satisfactory  proposals  as  to 
the  Irish  and  Welsh  Bills.  Redmond  felt  himself  obliged 
to  enter  a  protest.  It  had  been  agreed  that  the  circum- 
stances of  the  war  should  not  be  allowed  to  inflict  political 
injury  on  any  party  in  the  House  ;  and  he  would  give 
the  friendliest  consideration  to  any  proposal  for  giving 
to  the  Opposition  what  they  might  have  gained  by  a 
discussion  on  the  Amending  Bill. 

"  But  we  must  emphatically  say  that  any  proposal 
which  would  have  the  effect  of  depriving  us  of  the  enact- 
ment of  the  Irish  measure — and  I  presume  I  may  say 
the  same  with  reference  to  the  Welsh  measure — an  enact- 
ment to  which  we  were  entitled  practically  automatically 
when  the  circumstances  of  the  war  arose,  would  do  infinite 
mischief,  and  would  be  warmly  resented  by  us. 

"  Just  let  me  say  one  word  more.  There  has  arisen 
in  Ireland  the  greatest  opportunity  that  has  ever  arisen 
in  the  history  of  the  connection  between  the  two  countries 
for  a  thorough  reconciliation  between  the  people  of 
Ireland  and  the  people  of  this  country.  There  is  to-day, 
I  venture  to  say,  a  feeling  of  friendliness  to  this  country, 
and  a  desire  to  join  hands  in  supporting  the  interests 
of  this  country  such  as  were  never  to  be  found  in  the  past ; 
and  I  do  say  with  all  respect,  that  it  would  be  not 
only  a  folly,  but  a  crime,  if  that  opportunity  were  in  any 
degree  marred  or  wasted  by  any  action  which  this  country 
might  take.  I  ask  this  House — and  I  ask  aU  sections 
of  the  House — to  take  such  a  course  as  will  enable  me  to 
go  back  to  Ireland  to  translate  into  vigorous  action  the 
spirit  of  the  words  I  used  here  a  few  days  ago." 

An  angry  scene  followed.  Mr.  Balfour  asked  whether 
"  it  was  possible  decently  to  introduce  subjects  of  acute 
discussion  in  present  circumstances  " — in  other  words, 
whether  all  mention  of  Home  Rule  must  not  be  postponed 
till  after  the  war.     This  provoked  hot  debate,  checked 


WAR   IN   EUROPE  147 

only  by  a  strong  appeal  from  the  Prime  Minister.  But 
the  general  effect  was  not  reassuring  to  Ireland.  The 
contrast  with  the  Tsar's  prompt  grant  of  autonomy  to 
Poland  was  sharply  drawn.  Nobody  rated  high  the 
chances  of  an  amicable  agreement.  On  September 
4th  Sir  Edward  Carson  outlined  his  views  in  Belfast. 
Home  Rule  "  will  never  be  law  in  our  country."  But 
"  in  the  interests  of  the  State  and  of  the  Empire  we  will 
postpone  active  measures."  This  indicated  sufficiently 
that  in  his  judgment  the  Bill  might  become  law,  and 
that  they  would  not  be  encouraged  to  set  up  immediate 
resistance.  The  Prime  Minister,  as  chief  Minister  of  the 
nation,  must  be  supported  in  the  war  at  all  costs. 

Next  day,  renewing  at  Coleraine  his  appeal  for  recruits, 
he  said  : 

*'  We  are  not  going  to  abate  one  jot  or  tittle  of  our 
opposition  to  Home  Rule,  and  when  you  come  back  from 
serving  your  country  you  will  be  just  as  determined  as 
you  will  find  us  at  home." 

This  was  the  answer  to  Redmond's  proposal  of  fraterniza- 
tion. Clearly  Sir  Edward  Carson  had  made  up  his  mind 
that  he  could  not  prevent  the  passage  of  the  Bill,  and  he 
decided  upon  the  strongest  course,  which  was  to  advocate 
unlimited  support  to  the  war.  Any  other  course  would 
have  been  ruinous  to  his  cause,  which  depended  always 
upon  a  profession  of  the  extremest  loyalty.  Yet  only 
a  strong  man,  confident  in  his  leadership,  could  have 
taken  this  line  at  a  moment  when  Ulstermen  were  about 
to  feel  that  all  their  preparations  were  wasted  and  that 
the  game  had  been  won  against  them  by  a  paralysing 
chance. 

Before  the  House  reassembled  there  was  a  meeting  at 
the  Carlton  Club  ;  a  report  communicated  to  the  Press 
attributed  these  words  to  Sir  Edward  Carson — they  are 
typical  of  the  tone  of  the  time  : 

"  We  asked  for  no  terms  and  we  got  none.  We  did 
not  object  to  go  under  the  War  Office.     We  did  not  make 


148  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

speeches  calculated  to  humbug  or  deceive  while  we  meant 
to  do  nothing." 

On  September  15th  Government  announced  its  inten- 
tions. Both  Bills  were  to  be  placed  on  the  Statute  Book, 
but  their  operation  deferred  till  the  end  of  twelve  months, 
or,  if  the  war  were  not  then  over,  till  the  end  of  the  war. 
During  the  suspensory  period  Government  would  introduce 
an  Amending  Bill.  Mr.  Asquith  made  a  flattering  reference 
to  Sir  Edward  Carson's  action  in  appealing  to  his  organi- 
zation for  recruits,  and  admitted  that  "  it  might  be  said 
that  the  Ulstermen  had  been  put  at  a  disadvantage  by 
the  loyal  and  patriotic  action  which  they  had  undertaken." 
— This  meant  that  their  preparations  for  resistance  to  Mr. 
Asquith's  Government  were  disorganized. — He  proceeded 
to  promise  that  they  should  never  have  need  of  such 
preparations  ;  they  should  get  all  the  preparations  aimed 
at  without  having  to  use  them. 

"  I  say,  speaking  again  on  behalf  of  the  Government, 
that  in  our  view,  under  the  conditions  which  now  exist — 
we  must  all  recognize  the  atmosphere  which  this  great 
patriotic  spirit  has  created  in  the  country — the  employ- 
ment of  force,  any  kind  of  force,  for  what  you  call  the 
coercion  of  Ulster,  is  an  absolutely  unthinkable  thing. 
So  far  as  I  am  concerned,  and  so  far  as  my  colleagues 
are  concerned — I  speak  for  them,  for  I  know  their 
unanimous  feeling — that  is  a  thing  we  would  never 
countenance  or  consent  to." 

This  utterance  has  dominated  the  situation  from  that 
day  to  this.  Ulster  had  organized  to  rebel,  sooner  than 
come  under  an  Irish  Parliament ;  and  had  refrained 
from  rebellion  because  the  Great  War  was  in  progress. 
For  this  reason  Ulster  should  never  be  coerced,  no  matter 
what  might  happen.  Sir  Edward  Carson's  line  of  action 
had  secured  an  enormous  concession  :  he  might  have 
gone  back  to  his  people  and  said,  "  We  have  won."  But 
he  was  strong  enough  to  represent  it  as  a  new  outrage, 
which  they  for  the  sake  of  loyalty  must  in  the  hour  of 


WAR  IN  EUROPE  149 

common  danger  submit  to  endure.  By  this  course, 
risky  for  himself,  he  vastly  improved  their  position  in 
all  future  negotiation. — After  a  violent  speech  from 
Mr.  Bonar  Law  the  Tory  party  walked  out  of  the  House 
in  a  body. 

Redmond  rose  at  once.  He  denounced  the  view  that 
Ireland  had  gained  an  advantage,  or  desired  to  gain  one. 
The  Prime  Minister  had  at  every  stage  assured  him  that 
the  Bill  would  be  put  on  the  Statute  Book  in  that  session, 
and  therefore  it  was  unjust  to  say  that  his  loyalty  was 
only  conditional ;  he  had  asked  for  nothing  that  was 
not  won  in  advance.  Now,  instead  of  an  Act  to  become 
immediately  operative,  Ireland  received  one  with  at  least 
a  year's  delay.  Yet  this  moratorium  did  not  seem  to 
him  unreasonable. 

"  When  everybody  is  preoccupied  by  the  war  and 
when  everyone  is  endeavouring — and  the  endeavour  will 
be  made  as  enthusiastically  in  Ireland  as  anywhere  else 
in  the  United  Kingdom — to  bring  about  the  creation  of 
an  Army,  the  idea  is  absurd  that  under  these  circumstances 
a  new  Government  and  a  new  Parliament  could  be  erected 
in  Ireland." 

Further,  it  gave  time  for  healing  work.  The  two  things 
that  he  cared  for  most  "  in  this  world  of  politics  "  were  : 
first,  that  "  not  a  single  sod  of  Irish  soil  and  not  a  single 
citizen  of  the  Irish  nation  "  should  be  excluded  from  the 
operation  of  Irish  self-government ;  secondly,  that  no 
coercion  should  be  applied  to  any  single  county  in  Ireland 
to   force  their  submission. 

The  latter  of  these  ideals  was  cast  up  to  him  by  many 
in  Ireland,  first  in  private  grumblings,  afterwards  with 
public  iteration.  He  saw  and  admitted,  what  these 
critics  urged,  that  the  one  aspiration  made  the  other 
impossible  of  fulfilment,  for  the  moment.  Would  it 
be  so,  he  asked,  after  an  interval  in  which  Ulstermen 
and  other  Irishmen,  Nationalist  and  Unionist,  would  be 
found  fighting  and  dying  side  by  side  on  the  battlefield 


150  JOHN   REDMOND'S   LAST   YEARS 

on  the  Continent,  and  at  home,  as  he  hoped  and  believed, 
drilling  shoulder  to  shoulder  for  the  defence  of  the  shores 
of  their  own  country  ? 

On  that  hint  he  renewed  his  appeal  to  the  Ulster  Volun- 
teers for  co-operation  and  regretted  that  he  had  got  no 
response  from  them.  More  than  that,  he  urged  that  his 
appeal  to  Government  had  got  no  response.  "  If  they 
had  done  something  to  arm,  equip  and  drill  a  certain 
number  at  any  rate  of  the  National  Volunteers  the  re- 
cruiting probably  would  have  been  faster  than  it  had  been." 
Alluding  to  the  taunts  at  Ireland's  shirking  which  had 
been  bandied  about  in  interruptions  during  the  debate, 
he  recalled  the  stories  which  already  had  come  back  from 
France  of  Irish  valour  ;  of  the  Munster  Fusiliers  who 
stood  by  their  guns  all  day  and  in  the  end  dragged  them 
back  to  their  lines  themselves  ;  the  story  told  by  wounded 
French  soldiers  who  had  seen  the  Irish  Guards  charge 
three  German  regiments  with  the  bayonet,  singing  a 
strange  song  that  the  Frenchmen  had  never  heard  before — 
"  something  about  God  saving  Ireland," 

"  I  saw  these  men,"  said  Redmond,  "  marching 
through  London  on  their  way  to  the  station ;  they 
marched  here  past  this  building  singing  *  God  save 
Ireland  ! '  " 

But  he  could  not  rest  his  claim,  and  had  no  inten- 
tion of  resting  it,  merely  on  the  prowess  of  the  Irish 
regulars  already  in  the  army. 

*'  Speaking  personally..ior.  in^^self,  I_..do,_ not _ think  it.. is« 
an  exaggeration  to  say  that  on  hundreds  of  platforrns  in,. 
this  country  durfng  the  lasf  few  years  I  have  publicly 
'promised,  not  only  for  myself,  but  in  the  name  of  my 
country,  that  ^vhen  the  rights  of  IreUn^  were  fLdmitted 
Jby  the  democracy  of  England^  .Ireland  would  become 
the  strongest  arm  in  the   defence  of  the   Empire.     The^ 

test  has  come  sooner  than  I,  or  anywiej  expected. Ijfcell  _ 

the  Prime  TVIinistef  that  this  test  will  be  honourably  met. 
T^8j;y JPbr  myself    thatZLjwould  feel  myself  personally 


WAR    IN    EUROPE  151 

dishonoured  if  I  did  not  say  tq_my_  .f ellos^-countrymen  as 
say  to  them  here  to-day,  and  as  I  willsay  from  the_ 

public  platform  when  I  go  back  tqireland,  that  rt„isj}heir,. 

duty,   and  should  be  their  honour,   to _take ,^their.  .place 

in  the  fighting-line  in  this  contest." 

That  was  a  clear  pledge.     The  Home  Rule  BilLrjeceiyed. 

the   Royal  Assent  on  Septeraber.  18th. ,  But  before   the 

seal  was  affixed  Redmond's  manifesto  to  the  Irish  people 

was  in  all  the  newspapers.     It  was  his  call  to  arms^ 


CHAPTER   VI 
THE  RAISING  OF  THE  IRISH  BRIGADES 


AT  the  ending  of  the  long  session  of  Parliament  in 
1914  there  was  a  curious  scene  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  where  members  were  crowded  to  assist  at 
the  formal  passing  of  the  Irish  and  Welsh  Bills.  On  the 
adjournment,  Mr.  Will  Crooks,  from  his  seat  on  the  front 
bench  below  the  gangway,  called  out,  *'  Mr.  Speaker, 
would  it  be  in  order  to  sing  '  God  save  the  King  '  ?  " 
and  without  more  ado  uplifted  his  voice  and  the  House 
chimed  in.  There  must  have  been  strange  thoughts  in 
the  minds  of  Redmond,  of  Mr.  Dillon,  and  others  of  the 
Irish,  standing  in  the  places  where  they  had  fought  so 
long  and  bitter  a  battle,  where  they  had  been  so  often 
the  object  of  fierce  reproaches,  whence  they  had  hurled 
back  so  many  taunts,  now  to  find  themselves  the  centre 
of  congratulation,  and  joined  with  English  members  in 
singing  on  the  floor  of  the  House  that  national  anthem 
which  in  Ireland  had  been  for  decades  a  symbol  of 
ascendancy,  rigidly  tabooed  by  every  Nationalist. 

When  the  singing  ended,  Mr.  Crooks's  genial  voice  rose 
again.     "  God  save  Ireland  !  "  he  shouted. 

"  And   God   save  England  too  !  "   Redmond  answered. 

That  exchange  of  words  outside  the  period  of  debate 
is,  contrary  to  usage  but  very  properly,  recorded  in 
Hansard. 

From  this  time  forth  Redmond  was  on  his  trial.  He 
had  given  pledges  ;  he  must  make  good  to  Ireland  and 
make  good  to  Great  Britain.     For  the  first,  since  Home 


THE  RAISING  OF  THE  IRISH  BRIGADES      153 

Rule  could  nnf  V>A  hrn^1^j1i^^^^ff^f^PTat,^•on^hft  rnii^sf,  secure_ 

recognition  of  the  National  Volunteers,  must  establish 
anH^  regularize  their  status  ;  for  the  second,  he  must  _ 
obTain  recruits  as  Ireland's  contribution  to  the  war. 
'THe"two  proposals  were  in  his  view — and  indeed  were^n 
reality — inseparably  connected.  For  both,  in  order  to 
succeed,  he  needed  to  have  the  cordial  support  of  his 
fellow-countrymen  ;  for  both,  he  needed  whole-hearted 
co-operation  from  the  British  Government.  It  would 
be  too  much  to  say  that  Ireland  backed  him  cordially  ; 
but  for  the  limitation  of  Ireland's  response  the  fault 
lay  chiefly  and  primarily  with  the  Government,  which 
failed  him  completely.  The  War  Office  could  not  actually 
and  directly  oppose  his  effort  to  raise  troops  ;  what  they 
could  do  was  to  hamper  him  by  the  adoption  of  wrong 
methods  and  the  refusal  of  right  ones.  Yet  in  that  part 
of  his  task  which  involved  making  good  to  England, 
laying  England  and  the  Empire  under  a  debt  of  living 
gratitude,  his  apjDcal  was  made  to  Ireland,  and  he  succeeded 
so  far  that  only  Ireland  herself  could  have  destroyed 
his  work.  But  on  the  other  point,  which  involved  gaining 
satisfaction  for  Ireland,  the  appeal  was  made  to  Govern- 
ment and  the  refusal  was  complete.  It  was  worse  than 
absolute,  for  it  was  tainted  with  bad  faith.  Mr.  Asquith 
as  Prime  Minister  accepted  the  mutual  covenant  which 
Redmond  had  proposed,  and  allowed  Lord  Kitchener 
to  disallow  fulfilment   of  it. 

Redmond's  view  wasjaQt.iimit&d^iaJjreland's  interest. 
No  manHving  in  these  islands  felt  more  keenly  for  flie"* 
great  underlying  principles  at  issue  in  the  war.  His 
missiaOL^^asJie jjonceived  it,  was  to  lead  Ireland  to  serve 
those  principles.  But  It  was  Tufile"  to  suppose  that  Fe~' 
could  secure  for  England  all  that  England  expected  of 
Ireland  if  he  could  obtain  from  England  nothing  of  what 
Ireland  asked.  Redmond  wanted  recognition  for  the 
Volunteers  chiefly  as  a  basis  upon  which  Ireland  could 
feel  that  she  was  building  an  Irish  army  worthy  of  her 


BOSTON      01 


154  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

record  in  arms  ;  and  this  army  would  be  no  mean  assistance 
to  the  nations  allied  against  Germany's  aggression.  Con- 
sidering all  the  facts  which  have  to  be  set  out,  the  true 
cause  for  wonder  is  not  the  limitation  but  the  extent  of 
his  success. 

There  was  neither  delay  nor  uncertainty  in  his  exposition 
of  Ireland's  duty.  Quite  literally,  he  seized  the  first 
chance  that  came  to  his  hand.  He  left  London  on  the 
evening  when  the  Act  was  signed,  motored  to  Holyhead, 
as  he  liked  to  do,  in  the  big  car  which  his  friends  had 
presented  to  him — it  was  the  only  material  testimonial 
which  he  ever  received — and  crossed  by  the  night  boat, 
driving  on  in  the  morning  to  Aughavanagh.  When  he 
reached  the  Vale  of  Ovoca  he  found  a  muster  of  the  East 
Wicklow  Volunteers.  These  were  the  nearest  thing  to 
him  in  all  the  force — his  own  friends  and  neighbours 
from  the  Wicklow  hills.  Aughrim,  his  post-town  at  the 
foot  of  his  own  particular  valley,  had  its  company,  com- 
manded by  a  friend  of  his,  the  local  schoolmaster — typical 
of  what  was  best  in  the  Volunteers,  a  keen  Gaelic  Leaguer, 
tireless  in  work  for  the  old  language  and  old  history. 
This  man,  well  on  in  the  forties,  but  mountain-bred  and 
hardy,  had  thrown  himself  into  the  new  movement — 
little  guessing  that  a  few  months  would  see  him  a  private 
in  the  British  Army,  or  that  he  would  come  with  honour 
to  command  a  company  of  a  famous  Irish  regiment  on 
the  battlefields  of  a  European  war. 

If  it  had  been  only  for  the  sake  of  Captain  MacSweeny 
(he  was  then,  of  course,  only  a  captain  of  Volunteers), 
I  think  Redmond  would  have  stopped.  But  it  was  a 
gathering  of  many  friends,  who  pressed  him  to  speak 
at  a  moment  when  his  heart  was  full.  Grave  results 
followed  from  what  he  said  that  day  ;  but  a  week  sooner 
or  later  he  was  bound  to  ssij  these  things,  and  the  results 
were  bound  to  follow.     Here  is  the  pith  of  his  utterance  : 

"  I  know  that  you  will  make  efficient  soldiers.  Efficient 
for  what  ?     Wicklow  Volunteers,  in  spite  of  the  peaceful 


THE   RAISING   OF   THE   IRISH   BRIGADES     155 

happiness  and  beauty  of  the  scene  in  which  we  stand, 
remember  this  country  at  this  moment  is  in  a  state  q1^ 
war.  and  the  duty  of  the  manhood  of  Ireland  is  twofold.    ' 

Its  duty  *ii at"  alT  cost  ~fo"  defend  the  shores  of  Ireland   / 

'Trpin- for.eign  invasion.     It   has  a   duty   more   than  that,  |_ 
"  of  taking^  care  that  IrislT  valour  proves  itself  on  tlie  field  / 
*of  war  as  IF  has' always  proved  itself  in"  the  past.      The  / 
interests  of  Ireland,  of  the  whole  of  Ireland,  are  at  stakg  i 
in  this  war.     Tliis  war  is  undertaken  in  defence  of  tlTe  A 
highest    principles    of    religion    and    morality    and    right,    | 
and  it  would  be  a  disgrace  for  ever  to  our  country,   a    .; 
reproach  to  her  manhood,  and  a  denial  of  the  lessons  of    ; 
her   history,   if  young   Ireland   confined   their   eiforts   to    i 
remaining  at  home  to  defend  the  shores  of  Ireland  from 
an  unlikely  invasion,  or  should  shrink  from  the  duty  of 
proving  on  the  field  of  battle  that  gallantry  and  courage 
which   have  distinguished   their  race   all   through   all  its 
history.     I  say  to  you,  therefore,  your  duty  is  twofold^ 
I  am  glad  to  see  such  magnificent  material  for  soldiers 
around  me,  and  I  say  to  you  :    go  on  drilling  and  make 
yourselves  efficient   for    the    work,  and  then  account  for 
yourselves  as  men,  not  onlj''  in  Ireland  itself,  but  wherever 
the  firing-line  extends,  in  defence  of   right  and  freedom 
and  religion  in  this  war." 

On  the  following  Thursday  Mr.  Asquith,  as  Redm.ond 
had  publicly  urged  him  to  do,  came  to  Dublin  and  spoke 
at  the  Mansion  House  with  the  Lord  Mayor  in  the  chair. 
Mr.  Dillon  and  Mr.  Devlin,  as  well  as  Redmond,  were 
on  the  same  platform  and  spoke  also.  The  papers  of 
September  25th,  which  reported  the  speeches  of  this 
notable  gathering,  contained  also  a  manifesto  from  twenty 
members  of  the  original  Committee  of  the  Volunteers, 
definitely  breaking  with  Redmond's  policy  and  taking 
his  speech  to  the  Wicklow  Volunteers  as  their  cause  of 
action.  Having  recited  a  version  of  the  facts  which  led 
up  to  the  inclusion  of  Redmond's  nominees  on  the  Com- 
mittee, it  continued  : 

"  Mr.  Redmond,  addressing  a  body  of  Irish  Volunteers 
on  last  Sunday,  has  now  announced  for  the  Irish  Volunteers 
a  policy  and  programme  fundamentally  at  variance  with 


156  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

their  own  published  and  accepted  aims  and  objects,  but 
with  which  his  nominees  are,  of  course,  identified.  He 
has  declared  it  to  be  the  duty  of  the  Irish  Volunteers  to 
take  foreign  service  under  a  Government  which  is  not 
Irish.  He  has  made  this  announcement  without  con- 
sulting the  Provisional  Committee,  the  Volunteers  them- 
selves, or  the  people  of  Ireland,  to  whose  service  alone 
they  are  devoted." 

The  next  paragraph  announced  the  expulsion  of  Red- 
mond's nominees  and  the  reconstitution  of  the  Committee 
as  it  existed  before  their  admission.  Six  resolutions 
followed.  It  is  noteworthy  that  the  attitude  taken  up 
with  regard  to  autonomy  was  simply  "  to  oppose  any 
diminution  of  the  measure  of  Irish  self-government 
which  now  exists  as  a  Statute  on  paper,"  and  to 
repudiate  any  "  consent  to  the  legislative  dismember- 
ment of  Ireland."  There  was  no  word  of  an  Irish 
Republic  and  no  explicit  claim  beyond  immediate 
operation  for   the   Home   Rule   Act. 

Ireland's  attitude  towards  the  war  was  defined  by  a 
resolution  : 

"  To  declare  that  Ireland  cannot,  with  honour  or 
safety,  take  part  in  foreign  quarrels  otherwise  than 
through  the  free  action  of  a  National  Government  of 
her  own  ;  and  to  repudiate  the  claim  of  any  man  to 
offer  up  the  blood  and  lives  of  the  sons  of  Irishmen  and 
Irishwomen  to  the  service  of  the  British  Empire  while 
no  National  Government  which  could  speak  and  act 
for  the  people  of  Ireland  is  allowed  to  exist." 

Mr.  Asquith,  when  he  spoke  on  Thursday  night,  must 
have  been  informed  that  this  split  was  imminent,  and  he 
spoke  with  a  view  to  that  situation.     He  said  : 

"  Speaking  here  in  Dublin,  I  address  myself  for  a  moment 
particularly  to  the  National  Volunteers,  and  I  am  going 
to  ask  them  all  over  Ireland — not  only  them,  but  I  make 
the  appeal  to  them  particularly — to  contribute  with 
promptitude  and  enthusiasm  a  large  and  worthy  con- 
tingent of  recruits  to  the  second  new  army  of  half  a 


THE   RAISING   OF  THE   IRISH   BRIGADES     167 

million  which  is  now  growing  up,  as  it  were,  out  of  the 
ground,  I  should  like  to  see,  and  we  all  want  to  see,  an 
Irish  Brigade — or,  better  still,  an  Irish  Army  Corps. 
Don't  let  them  be  afraid  that  by  joining  the  colours  they 
will  lose  their  identity  and  become  absorbed  in  some 
invertebrate  mass,  or  what  is  perhaps  equally  repugnant, 
be  artificially  redistributed  into  units  which  have  no 
national  cohesion  or  character. 

"  We  shall,  to  the  utmost  limit  that  military  expediency 
will  allow,  see  that  men  who  have  been  already  associated 
in  this  or  that  district  in  training  and  in  common  exercises 
shall  be  kept  together  and  continue  to  recognize  the 
corporate  bond  which  now  unites  them.  One  thing 
further.  We  are  in  urgent  need  of  competent  officers, 
and  when  the  officers  now  engaged  in  training  these 
men  prove  equal  to  the  test,  there  is  no  fear  that  their 
services  will  not  be  gladly  and  gratefully  retained.  But, 
I  repeat,  gentlemen,  the  Empire  needs  recruits  and  needs 
them  at  once.  They  may  be  fully  trained  and  equipped 
in  time  to  take  their  part  in  what  may  prove  to  be  the 
decisive  field  in  the  greatest  struggle  of  the  history  of 
the  world.  That  is  our  immediate  necessity,  and  no 
Irishman  in  responding  to  it  need  be  afraid  he  is  jeopard- 
izing the  future  of  the  Volunteers. 

"  I  do  not  say,  and  I  cannot  say,  under  what  precise 
form  of  organization  it  will  be,  but  I  trust  and  I  believe 
— indeed,  I  am  sure — that  the  Volunteers  will  become  a 
permanent,  an  integral  and  characteristic  part  of  the 
defensive  forces  of  the  Crown. 

"  I  have  only  one  more  word  to  say.  Though  our 
need  is  great,  your  opportunity  is  also  great.  The  call 
which  I  am  making  is  backed  by  the  sympathy  of  your 
fellow-Irishmen  in  all  parts  of  the  Empire  and  of  the 
world.  .  .  .  There  is  no  question  of  compulsion  or  bribery. 
What  we  want,  what  we  ask,  what  we  believe  you  are 
ready  and  eager  to  give,  is  the  freewill  offering  of  a  free 
people." 

This  was  a  double  pledge  as  to  Redmond's  two  objects. 
It  promised,  first,  that  every  inducement  should  be  given 
to  join  a  corps  distinctively  Irish  and  having  national 
cohesion  and  character ;  secondly,  that  the  Volunteers 
should  obtain  recognition  as  part  of  the  defensive  forces 


158  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

of  the  Crown.  Over  and  above  this  was  an  assurance  of 
enormous  importance.  There  was  to  be  no  question  of 
compulsion.  Nothing  was  asked,  nothing  would  be  asked, 
but  *'  the  freewill  offering  of  a  free  people." 

Lord  Meath  followed,  a  representative  figure  of  L^nionist 
Ireland  and  a  most  zealous  promoter  of  recruiting.  Then 
Redmond  spoke,  and  as  usual  dwelt  on  Ireland's  contri- 
bution to  the  forces  of  the  Regular  Army  so  far  actually 
engaged,  which  was  fully  adequate  in  numbers.  *'  As 
to  quality,  let  Sir  John  French  answer  for  that,  and  let 
my  friend  and  fellow-countryman  Admiral  Beatty  from 
Wexford  speak  from  Heligoland." — Nothing  gave  him 
more  pleasure  at  all  times  than  to  dwell  on  the  personal 
achievement  of  Irishmen  ;  his  voice  kindled  when  he 
named  such  names. — He  went  on  to  give  confident  assur- 
ance, having  in  it  the  note  of  defiant  answer  to  the  revolt 
which  had  been  raised  : 

"  I  tell  the  Prime  Minister  he  will  get  here  plenty  of 
recruits  and  of  the  best  material.  We  will  maintain 
here  in  Ireland  intact  and  inviolate  our  Irish  National 
Volunteers,  and  in  my  judgment  that  body  of  Volunteers 
will  prove  to  be  an  inexhaustible  source  of  strength  to  the 
new  army  corps  and  the  new  army  that  is  being  created." 

Then,  with  disdainful  reference  to  the  "  little  handful 
of  pro-Germans  "  who  had  "  raised  their  voices  in  Ireland," 
he  declared  that  it  would  be  no  less  absurd  to  consider 
them  representative  than  to  take  General  Beyers  and  not 
General  Botha  as  expressing  the  sentiments  of  South  Africa. 

Yet,  as  we  know,  the  danger  in  South  Africa  was  serious, 
and  South  Africa  possessed  freedom,  not  the  promise  of 
freedom.  General  Botha  had  what  Redmond  was  denied 
— power  to  act  and  act  promptly.  In  Ireland  the  menace 
was  far  less  grave  at  this  moment,  but  it  was  destined  to 
become  overpowering  because  Redmond  lacked  the  power 
to  deal  with  the  situation  in  his  own  way.  Already 
much  had  been  lost.  Between  the  declaration  of  war 
and  the  passage  of  the  Home  Rule  Bill  more  than  six 


THE   RAISING   OF  THE   IRISH  BRIGADES     159 

weeks  had  been  allowed  to  elapse  in  which  nothing  was 
done  in  response  to  Redmond's  proposal,  except  the 
purely  negative  decision  that  Territorials  should  not  be 
sent  to  garrison  Ireland.  This  inevitably  strengthened 
the  hand  of  those  who  never  liked  the  offer  he  had  made. 
From  the  first  an  accent  of  dissent  from  the  new  policy 
was  plainly  distinguishable  in  what  came  from  the  Com- 
mittee of  the  Volunteers.  Mr.  Bulmer  Hobson  says  of 
the  famous  speech  of  August  4th : 

"  This  statement  amounted  to  an  unconditional  offer 
of  the  services  of  the  Irish  Volunteers  to  the  English 
Government,  and  was  made  without  any  consultation 
with  the  Volunteers  themselves.  The  first  that  members 
of  the  Provisional  Committee  heard  of  their  being  offered 
to  the  Government  was  when  they  read  it  in  the  news- 
papers, and  Mr.  Redmond's  nominees  on  the  Committee 
were  as  much  surprised  as  the  older  members.  At  the 
next  meeting  of  the  Standing  Committee,  held  a  couple 
of  days  later,  the  nominated  members  strove  hard  to 
induce  us  to  endorse  Redmond's  offer.  The  utmost  they 
could  get,  however,  notwithstanding  their  clear  party 
majority,  was  a  statement  of  '  the  complete  readiness 
of  the  Irish  Volunteers  to  take  joint  action  with  the 
Ulster  Volunteer  Force  for  the  defence  of  Ireland.' 
Further  than  that  the  older  members  of  the  Committee 
declined  to  go.  This  statement  in  reality  committed,  and 
was  meant  to  commit,  the  Volunteers  to  nothing,  though 
it  was  interpreted  by  the  Press  as  a  complete  endorse- 
ment of  Mr.  Redmond's  policy." 

At  the  beginning  of  the  war,  there  were  two  strong 
currents  of  desire  in  the  Volunteer  body  and  its  backers. 
One  sought  that  the  Volunteers  should  retain  complete 
freedom  of  action  and  in  no  way  be  brought  under  the 
War  Office.  The  other  craved  to  see  them  trained  and 
armed   with   the   least   possible   delay.     Colonel   Moore, i 

'  Lieutenant-Colonel  Maiirice  Moore,  C.B.,  an  officer  who  had 
served  with  distinction  in  South  Africa,  and  whose  father,  George 
Henry  Moore,  had  been  a  famous  advocate  in  Parhament  of  Tenant 
Right  and  Repeal. 


160  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

who  was  the  chief  of  their  military  staff  at  this  time, 
says  Mr.  Hobson,  saw  no  way  of  accomplishing  the  latter 
object  without  the  assistance  of  the  military  authorities. 
Other  men,  who  had  come  in  since  Redmond's  speech, 
impressed  on  the  public  that  without  legal  recognition 
from  the  Crown  no  Volunteer  could  act  against  the  Germans 
in  case  of  a  landing  without  exposing  himself  and  others 
to  the  penalties  which  Germany  was  inflicting  in  Belgium 
wherever  the  civilian  population  fired  a  shot.  As  a 
result,  negotiations  were  opened  in  August  1914  with  the 
Irish  Command,  and  Colonel  Moore,  in  concert  with 
General  Paget's  staff,  drew  up  a  scheme  for  training  the 
Irish  and  Ulster  Volunteers  and  for  using  them  when 
trained  for  a  short  term  of  garrison  duty  in  Ireland.  The 
scheme  was  submitted  to  the  Provisional  Committee,  who 
added  conditions  designed  to  lead  to  rejection  by  the  War 
Office ;  and  in  the  upshot  Colonel  Moore's  proposals 
were  refused  by  Lord  Kitchener  on  one  side  and  by  the 
Standing  Committee  of  Volunteers  on  the  other. 

Redmond  was  of  course  aware  of  the  failure  of  this 
scheme,  and  took  up  the  matter  personally.  He  wrote 
to  the  Chief  Secretary  : 

House  of  Commons, 
September  9,  1914. 
Private. 

My  Dear  Mr.  Birrell, 

I  am  very  anxious  to  put  shortly  before  you 
on  paper  my  views  with  reference  to  the  Volunteer 
question,  which  we  discussed  with  the  Prime  Minister 
to-day.  I  take  so  strong  a  view  on  the  subject  that  I 
think  I  must  ask  you  to  show  him  this  letter  and  to  urge 
upon  him  the  importance  of  getting  the  War  Office  to 
move.  I  know  the  influences  that  are  at  work  in  the 
War  Office  throwing  cold  water  on  the  Volunteers  and 
causing  intense  dissatisfaction  in  Ireland  by  unnecessary 
delays. 

What  I  suggest  should  be  done  is  this  : 
There     are     two    separate    questions  :     (1)    Recruits ; 
and  (2)  Volunteers  for  Home  Defence. 


THE   RAISING   OF  THE   IRISH  BRIGADES     161 

The  first  absolutely  depends  upon  the  way  in  which 
the  second  is  treated.  If  the  existing  Volunteer  organi- 
zation is  ignored  and  sneered  at  and  made  little  of, 
recruiting  in  the  country  will  not  go  ahead. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  the  Volunteers  are  properly 
treated,  I  believe  that  recruiting  will  go  ahead. 

Now,  my  suggestion  is  this  :  that  an  announcement 
should  be  made  immediately  that  the  War  Office  are 
taking  steps  to  assist  in  the  equipment  and  arming  and 
instructing  of  a  certain  number  of  the  Irish  Volunteers 
for  Home  Defence,  and  that  this  will  be  done  without 
interfering  in  any  way  with  the  character  or  organization 
of  the  existing  Volunteer  Force. 

Carrying  out  this  programme  will  really  not  stand 
in  the  way  of  the  preparing  of  the  new  Army.  All  that 
is  required  is  a  few  thousand  rifles,  and  there  are  plenty 
of  them  in  the  military  stores  in  Ireland  at  this  moment 
which  are  not  being  used  and  will  not  be  used,  because 
they  are  too  old,  in  the  training  of  the  recruits,  but  which 
would  be  quite  suitable  for  making  a  beginning  at  any 
rate  in  the  drilling  of  the  Volunteers.  It  might  be  stated 
that  they  would  be  replaced  by  better  weapons  gradually, 
as  soon  as  the  rush  was  over. 

A  few  instructors  should  be  placed  at  the  disposal 
of  the  Volunteers. » 

If  this  is  done,  intense  satisfaction  will  be  given  all 
through  the  countrj'',  and  the  pride  and  sentiment  of  the 
Volunteers  will  be  touched,  and  the  appeal  for  recruits 
generally  through  the  country,  and  even  in  the  ranks  of  the 
Volunteers  themselves,  will,  I  am  confident,  be  responded  to. 

But,  as  I  have  said,  if  this  course  is  not  taken,  in- 
evitably  recruiting   will   flag. 

I  would  earnestly  beg  of  you  to  take  this  matter 
vigorously  in  hand,  so  that  some  satisfactory  announce- ^ 
ment  may  be  made  before  I  return  to  Ireland  next  week, 

Very  truly  yours, 

Right  Hon.  A.  Birrell,  M.P.  J-   E-   RedmONDJ 

I  Rifles  were  really  not  available,  nor  competent  instructors. 
But  the  essential  was  recognition.  A  grant  towards  equipment 
should  have  been  given,  and  possibly  other  assistance.  We  secured 
several  thousand  rifles  in  Belgium  about  this  time.  For  instructors, 
any  old  crippled  veterans  paid  by  Government  would  have  con- 
veyed the  sense  of  recognition. 

12 


162  JOHN   REDMOND'S   LAST   YEARS 

Mr.  Asquith's  speech  on  Sfi|it£mhsr_24th  was  at  least 
_an  indication  that  the  Prime  Minister  desired  to  act  in 
the  spirit  of  Redmond's  suggestions.  The  Chief  Seci-e- 
tary  was  of  the  same  disposition.  But  neither  of  them 
was  able  to  control  the  imperious  colleague  who  now  had 
taken  charge  of  the  Army,  and  who  in  the  most  critical^ 
moment  thwarted  effectuaUy^  jtlie_desi^s_  of  Liberal 
statesmanship  in  Ireland. 

After  Redmond's  death  an  "  Appreciation  "  published 
in  The  Times  (with  the  signature  "  A.  B.,")  by  Mr.  Birrell, 
contained  this  passage  : 

**  He  felt  to  the  very  end,  bitterly  and  intensely,  the 
stupidity  of  the  War  Office.  Had  he  been  allowed  to 
deflect  the  routine  indifference  and  suspicion  of  the  War 
Office  from  its  old  ruts  into  the  deep-cut  channels  of  Irish 
feelings  and  sentiments,  he  might  have  carried  his  country- 
men with  him,  but  he  jumped  first  and  tried  to  make 
his  bargain  afterwards  and  failed  accordingly.  English 
people,  as  their  wont  is,  gushed  over  him  as  an  Irish 
patriot  and  flouted  him  as  an  Irish  statesman.  Had  he 
and  bis  brother  been  put  in  charge  of  the  Irish  Nationalist 
contingents,  and  an  Ulster  man,  or  men,  been  put  in  a 
corresponding  position  over  the  Irish  Protestant  con- 
tingents, all  might  have  gone  well.  Lord  Kitchener,  w^ho 
was  under  the  delusion  that  he  was  an  Irishman  no  less 
than  Redmond,  was  the  main,  though  not  the  only 
obstacle  in  the  path  of  good  sense  and  good  feeling." 

Yet  it  is,  to  say  the  least,  not  clear  why  Lord  Kitchener 
should  have  been  allowed  to  be  an  obstacle.  Redmond 
was  not  fortunate  in  his  allies.  He  had  set  an  example 
of  generous  courage  ;  it  was  not  followed  by  British 
statesmen. 

Froin  the  very  outset  of  his  campaign  in  Ireland  he 
had  two  hostilities  to  meet.  The  first  was  that  of  the 
section  which  had  always  been  opposed  to  him — the 
Unionist  party.  Into  this  block  he  had  already  driven 
a  wedge.  The  Irish  Times,  its  principal  organ  in  the 
South  and  West,  was  now  backing  him  heartily,  and,  as 


THE   RAISING  OF  THE  IRISH  BRIGADES     163 

has  been  seen,  not  a  few  leading  Unionists  were  doing 
their  utmost  to  assist.  But  the  real  opposition,  that 
of  Ulster,  was  in  no  way  conciliated.  On  September 
28th,  "  Covenant  Day,"  a  great  meeting  was  held  at  which 
the  Ulstermen  denounced  what  they  called  the  Govern- 
ment's treachery,  and  declared  their  implacable  deter- 
mination never  to  submit  to  Home  Rule.  Mr.  Bonar 
Law  for  the  British  Unionists  proclaimed  that  whereas 
heretofore  his  party  were  willing  to  be  bound  by  the 
verdict  of  a  general  election,  they  now  withdrew  that 
condition,  and  without  any  reservation  would  support 
Ulster  in  whatever  course  it  chose  to  adopt. 

In   a   purely   partisan   sense   these   speeches,   and   this 
attitude,  did    Redmond  no  harm  in  his  campaign  with 
Nationalists.    IWhen   a   certain   section   of   Home   Rulers  ? 
[were  clamouring  that  he  had  been  tricked  and  betrayed  f 
i  by  the  Government,   had  given  all  and  got  nothing,  it 
/  was  a  good  rejoinder  to  point  to  the  fact  that  in  Ulster's 
I  opinion  the  opportunity  had  been  used  to  gain  an  unfair  ^ 
I  victory  for  Home  Rule.  \  But  Redmond  from  the  outbrealT" 
of  the  war  had  no  concern  with  party  or  partisan  argu- 
ments.    He  wanted  a  real  truce,  an  end  of  bitterness, 
in  Ireland. 

There  was,  moreover,  a  feature  of  the  Ulster  propa- 
ganda in  these  days  which  disturbed  him.  General 
Richardson,  a  retired  Indian  officer,  who  had  chief  com- 
mand of  the  Ulster  Volunteer  Force,  in  appealing  for 
recruits,  urged  the  Volunteers  "  to  recollect  the  events  of 
March  last  and  what  the  Navy  and  Army  did  for  Ulster. 
They  came  to  the  help  of  Ulster  in  the  day  of  trouble, 
and  would  come  again."  He  added  his  assurance  to  the 
Volunteers  that  "  when  the  war  was  over,  and  their  ranks 
were  reinforced  by  some  12,000  men,  thoroughly  well 
trained  and  with  vast  field  experience,  they  would  return 
to  the  attack  and  relegate  Home  Rule  to  the  devil." 

It  did  not  assist  Redmond  in  gaining  recruits  for  the 
Army  that  a  general  officer  should  represent  the  services 


164  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

as  trusty  and  proven  allies  of  gentlemen  whose  leading 
idea  in  life  was  to  relegate  Home  Rule  to  such  a  destina- 
tion. The  average  Nationalist  civilian  did  not  easily  dis- 
criminate between  what  was  said  by  a  retired  ofl&cer  out 
of  commission  and  what  was  said  by  officers  in  uniform. 
There  was  a  tendency  to  regard  General  Richardson  as 
speaking  of  right  for  the  Army — for  which  Nationalist 
recruits  were  desired. 

The  Liberal  Government  could  not  help  Redmond  to 
allay  Ulster  or  Unionist  hostility.     One  thing  they  could 
do ;     they    could    ensure    that    whatever    concession    or 
privilege  was  extended  to  those  who  followed  Sir  Edward 
Carson  should  be  equally  accorded  to  those  who  followed 
Redmond.     This  one  thing  which  they  could  have  done   . 
they   did   not   do.      They    allowed   the    War    Office   to  / 
increase  the  arrogance  of  the  Ulstermen  and  to  weaken/ 
Redmond's   hand,    by    giving    Ulster    special    privileges, 
which    inevitably     created    jealousy     and    suspicion     in 
Nationalist  Ireland — as  shall  be  shown  in  detail. 

But  first  it  is  necessary  to  indicate  the  other  element 
of  hostility — far  more  serious  than  that  of  Ulster,  because 
it  challenged  Redmond's  leadership.  It  was  that  of  the 
extremist  group,  which  rapidly  began  to  welcome  German 
successes,  not  for  any  love  to  Germany  but  because  it 
could  not  conceive  of  any  hope  for  Ireland  except  in 
the  weakening  or  destruction  of  British  power.  These 
men,  as  has  been  already  seen,  had  acquired  an  influence 
in  the  Volunteer  Force  out  of  all  proportion  to  their 
numbers,  owing  to  the  fact  that  the  Irish  party  had  stood 
aloof  from  the  movement  in  its  early  stages.  Professor 
MacNeiU  said  later  that  but  for  the  Gaelic  League  and 
the  Gaelic  Athletic  Association  there  would  have  been 
no  Irish  Volunteers.  The  bulk  of  both  these  bodies 
was  always  antagonistic  to  the  parliamentary  move- 
ment. When  their  opposition  openly  declared  itself,  in 
consequence  of  the  East  Wicklow  speech,  Redmond 
was  not  sorry  to  have  a  clear  issue  raised,  involving  a 


THE   RAISING   OF  THE   IRISH  BRIGADES     166 

formal  breach.  In  a  public  letter  to  Colonel  Moore  he 
wrote  that  he  read  "  this  extraordinary  manifesto  with 
feelings  of  great  relief,"  because  communications  from 
all  parts  of  the  country  had  forced  him  to  the  conclusion 
that  so  long  as  the  signatories  to  this  document  remained 
members  of  the  governing  body,  "  no  practical  work 
could  be  done  to  put  the  Volunteer  organization  on  a 
real  business  basis." 

By  a  real  "  business  basis  "  he  meant  that  the  Volun- 
teers should  be  made  a  defensive  force  to  act  in  concert 
with  the  troops  engaged  in  the  war.  That  was  the  clear 
issue.  You  must  be  for  the  troops  or  against  them. 
In  these  days  the  official  attitude  of  those  who  signed 
the  dissenting  manifesto  was  that  Ireland  should  be 
neutral.  But  at  such  a  crisis,  as  Mr.  Dillon  said  in  a 
telling  phrase,  a  man  who  calls  himself  a  neutral  "  is 
either  an  enemy  or  a  coward." 

It  became  only  too  clear  later  that  we  had  to  do  with 
a  body  of  men  who  were  enemies  and  were  certainly  not 
cowards.  Their  number  at  this  moment  was  difficult 
to  determine.  What  immediately  revealed  itself  was 
that  the  vast  majority  of  the  Volunteers,  when  choice 
was  forced  on  them,  adhered  to  Redmond. 

The  case  of  my  own  constituency,  Galwaj?"  City,  may 
be  given  as  typical,  though  rather  of  the  towns  than 
of  the  country.  The  country-side  was  apathetic  ;  the 
towns  were  both  for  and  against  Redmond's  policy.  In 
Galway,  Sinn  Fein  had  a  strong  hold  on  the  college  of 
the  National  University,  but,  on  the  other  hand,  the  depot 
of  the  Connaught  Rangers  was  just  outside  the  city  at 
Renmore,  and  that  famous  corps  had  many  partisans  ; 
while  in  the  fishing  village  of  the  Claddagh  nearly  every 
man  was  a  naval  reservist. 

I  came  to  Galway  on  the  day  the  Home  Rule  Bill  was 
signed  and  attended  a  couple  of  Volunteer  drills,  where 
I  noted  the  activity  of  some  young  men  going  round 
with  a  password  :    *'  For  whom  will  you  serve  ?  "     "  For 


166  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

Ireland  only."  After  the  publication  of  the  dissenting 
manifesto  a  Committee  was  called,  and  I  obtained  leave 
to  be  present.  There  was  a  sharp  discussion,  and  at 
the  finish  the  vote  was  a  tie,  whether  to  support  Redmond 
or  the  dissentients.  This  did  not  at  all  please  me  or 
my  friends,  so  we  determined  to  have  a  big  general 
meeting  to  see  on  which  side  public  support  really  lay. 
Everybody  was  invited,  and  a  great  many  people  could 
not  get  into  the  hall ;  this  mattered  the  less  because 
the  Sinn  Feiners  cut  the  electric  wires  leading  to  the 
building  and  plunged  us  in  darkness  ;  luckily,  it  was  a 
fine  night,  and  we  took  the  meeting  outside  with  great 
success.  A  couple  of  interruptions  were  drastically  dealt 
with,  and  complete  peace  then  prevailed.  Two  of  the 
four  county  members  were  among  the  many  speakers, 
and  the  last  man  to  address  the  meeting  was  a  wounded 
Connaught  Ranger  back  from  the  line.  We  cheered  for 
the  Rangers,  and  then  we  cheered  for  the  King  ;  the 
local  band  was  present,  but  unable,  though  quite  willing, 
to  assist  at  this  point.  "  Isn't  it  a  pity,"  the  chief 
bandsman  said  to  me,  "  there  was  three  of  us  knew  the 
tune  well,  but  they've  all  gone  to  the  front,  and  not  a 
one  of  us  ever  heard  it." 

But  as  a  net  result  the  original  Volunteer  organization 
was  killed.  The  pick  of  the  young  and  keen  who  were 
with  us  went  off  to  the  war  ;  the  young  and  keen  who 
stayed  kept  up  an  organization  with  very  different  pur- 
poses. There  was  plenty  of  material  in  Galway  and 
everywhere  else  to  build  up  a  volunteer  corps  such  as 
Redmond  desired  to  see  ;  but  the  organizing  spirits 
were  in  the  opposite  camp,  and  our  friends  did  not 
interest  themselves  in  what  seemed  to  be  a  kind  of  play- 
acting when  such  serious  business  was  afoot  in  the  world. 
Had  they  been  set  to  duties  of  coast  patrol,  under  officers 
who  were  available  on  the  spot,  and  given  clear  recogni- 
tion as  part  of  the  defensive  forces,  their  body  would 
have  been  alive  and  active  ;    as  it  was,  it  atrox^hied  and 


THE  RAISING   OF  THE  IRISH  BRIGADES     167 

grew  inert.  Broadly  speaking,  the  same  was  true  all 
over  the  country.  Redmond  was  willing  to  make  bricks 
for  the  War  Office  to  build  with  ;  they  insisted  that  he 
should  make  them  without  straw. 

Facts  directly  connected  with  recruiting  ultimately 
convinced  the  British  public  that  the  War  Office  had 
spoilt  a  great  opportunity  in  Ireland.  But  the  funda- 
mental blunder,  the  deep-seated  cause  which  undermined 
the  force  of  Redmond's  appeal,  was  the  refusal  of  recog- 
nition to  the  National  Volunteers  and  the  failure  to 
fulfil  the  promise  held  out  in  Mr.  Asquith's  Dublin 
speech. 


II 

The  other  respects  in  which  the  War  Office  crippled 
the  Nationalist  efforts  after  recruiting  were  matters  of 
detail,  not  of  principle.  The  first  and  best  help  which 
Redmond  might  expect  would  have  come  from  his  col- 
leagues in  the  party  ;  and  all  the  recruiting  authorities 
in  Ireland  should  have  been  directed  to  secure  that  help 
locally.  No  such  step  was  taken.  No  attempt  was 
made  to  enlist  Nationalists  of  position  as  patrons  of  the 
recruiting  campaign.  In  Catholic  Nationalist  districts 
it  was  the  rule  rather  than  the  exception  to  select  gentle- 
men of  the  Protestant  Church,  and  of  strong  Unionist 
opinions,  as  recruiting  officers.  If  Catholic  Nationalists 
had  been  selected  as  the  official  agents  to  assist  in  raising 
the  Ulster  Division,  there  would  have  been  an  outcry, 
and  very  rightly  ;  it  would  have  been  contrary  to  common 
sense.  But  the  War  Office,  always  even  obsequiously 
readj''  to  consider  the  Ulstermen's  point  of  view,  com- 
pletely lacked  sympathy  for  that  of  the  majority  in 
Ireland.  In  some  cases  the  choice  of  a  man  locally 
unpopular  on  public  grounds  afforded — to  speak  plainly 
— an    excuse   for    those   leading   Nationalists    who    were 


168  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

loath  to  depart  from  all  the  tradition  of  their  lifetime. 
Some  of  Redmond's  colleagues  held  that  they  had  been 
"  extreme  men  "  all  their  lives,  and  they  thought  it  too 
hard  that  they  should  be  expected  to  ask  Irishmen  to 
join  the  English  Army.  Yet  these  same  men  would  have 
worked  enthusiastically  for  the  Volunteers,  and  by  sym- 
pathy for  their  comrades  who  went  out  could  have  been 
led  into  a  very  different  attitude. 

Many  of  them,  too,  felt  an  honourable  scruple  about 
asking  others  to  do  what  they  could  not  do  themselves. 
As  a  parliamentary  group  we  were  under  a  singular 
disability.  In  its  early  days  the  Irish  party  had  been, 
what  Sinn  Fein  is  now,  a  party  of  the  young.  But  so 
strong  was  the  tie  of  gratitude  that  service  in  its  ranks 
became  an  inheritance,  and  in  most  cases  a  man  once 
elected  stayed  on  till  he  died  or  resigned.  By  1914,  of 
all  parties  in  the  House  we  had  by  far  the  largest  propor- 
tion of  men  over  military  age.  I  question  whether  three 
out  of  the  seventy  could  have  passed  the  standard  then 
exacted — for  two  or  three  of  the  younger  men  were 
medically  unfit.  In  these  circumstances  the  War  Office 
would  have  been  well  advised  to  waive  a  regulation  or 
two  to  facilitate  matters  ;  but  the  rigour  of  the  rules 
was  maintained.  One  of  my  colleagues,  a  man  in  the 
early  forties,  offered  to  join  as  a  private  ;  he  was  refused. 
In  my  own  case  a  similar  refusal  was  based  on  Lord 
Kitchener's  personal  opinion  against  that  of  the  Under- 
Secretary  for  War,  to  whom,  as  a  personal  friend,  I  had 
written  ;  it  took  nearly  six  months  to  get  the  decision 
altered  ;  and  by  that  time  the  value  of  examj)le  was 
much  depreciated.  The  beginning  was  the  chance  to 
give  a  lead. 

Far  graver  was  the  intolerable  delay  in  forming  a 
corps  which  should  appeal  definitely  to  Irish  national 
and  Nationalist  sentiment.  The  First  Army  included 
one  Irish  Division — the  Tenth,  destined  to  a  splendid 
history,  under  a  popular  commander,  Sir  Bryan  Mahon  ; 


THE  RAISING   OF  THE   IRISH  BRIGADES     169 

but  it  had  no  specially  Nationalist  colour,  so  to  say,  and 
no  connection  with  the  Irish  Volunteers.  Redmond 
wanted  the  counterpart  of  what  had  been  readily 
granted  to  Sir  Edward  Carson  ;  and  this  was  what 
Mr.  Asquith  had  outlined  in  his  speech  at  Dublin.  The 
Sixteenth  Division  already  existed  ;  its  commander  was 
appointed  on  September  17th.  But  the  first  step  to 
give  it  the  desired  character  was  not  taken  without  long 
delay,  and  much  heart-burning  and  confusion  resulted. 

Part  of  the  confusion  is  attributable  to  the  fact  that 
Redmond,  in  his  desire  to  touch  the  historic  memories 
connected  with  the  famous  corps  which  attained  its  crown- 
ing glory  at  Fontenoy,  always  spoke  of  "a  new  Irish 
Brigade."  But  at  the  Mansion  House  meeting  Mr. 
Asquith  spoke  of  something  more  than  a  brigade — an 
army  corps  ;  and  Redmond,  following  him,  instantly 
accepted  the  idea.  "  I  used  the  word  '  brigade  '  in  my 
ignorance — I  meant  an  Irish  army  corps."  There  was 
always  present  to  his  mind  the  hope  that  in  some  larger 
formation  the  Ulster  Division  might  find  itself  shoulder 
to  shoulder  with  other  Irish  troops. 

Yet  intending  recruits  were  puzzled,  and  Lord  Heath, 
writing  to  Redmond  on  October  10th  that  he  had  formed 
a  Recruiting  Committee  in  Dublin  "  for  the  purpose  of 
endeavouring  to  raise  the  Irish  Army  Corps  for  which 
you  spoke,"  reported  that  men  came  in  asking  to  know 
where  was  the  Irish  Brigade,  and  refused  to  join  anything 
else.  Lord  Meath  suggested  that  Redmond  should 
obtain  from  Lord  Kitchener  "  an  official  declaration 
sanctioning  the  enlistment  of  Irishmen  in  an  Irish  Brigade, 
or  Irish  Army  Corps,  consisting  exclusively  of  Irish 
officers  and  men."  He  wrote  again  on  the  14th,  asking 
that  the  Prime  Minister  himself  should  be  approached, 
and  on  the  17th,  in  reply  to  some  communication  from 
Redmond  :  "I  hope  jou  will  insist  on  some  official  and 
unmistakable  statement  that  your  request  has  been 
granted." 


170  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

The  tone  of  these  letters,  coming  from  no  fire-eating 
Nationalist    but    the    staunchest    of    Unionist    peers,    is 
sufficient  proof  that  Lord  Kitchener's  action  or  inaction 
was  resented  by  those  who  knew  Ireland  and  had  the 
best    interests    of    Ireland    at    heart.     The    Irish    Times 
wrote  in  the  same  sense  ;    and  on  October  19th  a  formal 
attack  was  launched  in  the  Daily  Chronicle,  which  drew 
a  sharp  contrast  with  the  treatment  accorded  to  Ulster. 
"  Up  to  this  hour,"  the  writer  said,  "  the  Irish  Division 
asked  for  by   Mr.   Redmond   has   been  refused  sanction 
by   the   War   Office,"     This   was   an   overstatement,   but 
it  was  true  that  up  to  this  time  such  a  belief  naturally 
prevailed,  because  the  War  Office  could  not  be  induced 
to   make   the   desired   announcement   that   sanction   had 
been  given.     Moreover,  although  the  concession  had  been 
made,  it  was  made  in  a  very  different  way  from  that 
used    in    dealing    with    Sir    Edward    Carson.     Redmond 
had  no  voice  whatever  in  the  organization.     The  choice 
of   a  divisional  commander  was  of  infinite  im.portance  ; 
and  it  fell  upon  Lieutenant- General  Sir  Lawrence  Parsons, 
K.C.B.,   an  artillery   officer  of  great  distinction,   a  man 
of  wide  general  knowledge  and  culture    and  of  strongly 
marked    individuality.     Yet    his    individuality    did    not 
make   him   easy   for   Redmond   to   work   with.     He   was 
not  simply  a  typical  professional  soldier  of  the  old  Army  ; 
he  was  an  idealist  in  his  profession  ;    and  part  of  the 
professional   soldier's   idealism   is   to   resent   and   despise 
political    considerations.     He    recognized    that   Redmond 
had   spoken   and   acted   with   a   statesman's   vision  ;     he 
failed  to  recognize  that  in  many  matters  political  tactics 
are   necessary   to   carry   out   a   statesman's   plan.     Also, 
it  was  very  difficult  for  him  or  for  any  other  professional 
soldier  to  realize  that  recruiting,  under  such  conditions 
as  then  prevailed,  was  a  politician's  task,  not  a  soldier's, 
even  in  Great  Britain  ;    and  that  this  was  tenfold  more 
true  of  Ireland. 

The  point  requires  to  be  emphasized,  because  it  applies 


THE   RAISING   OF  THE  IRISH  BRIGADES     171 

to  a  greater  personage — Lord  Kitchener  himself.  I 
believe  that  Lord  Kitchener  honestly  desired  the  success 
of  Redmond's  mission.  To  my  personal  knowledge  he 
sent  for  one  officer  long  known  to  him  and  took  him  from 
a  command  in  which  he  was  comfortably  placed  and 
sent  him,  against  his  will,  to  raise  one  of  our  battalions 
in  a  difficult  area.  The  choice  was  absolutely  sound, 
and  success  was  achieved  by  methods  which  did  not 
always  follow  strictly  the  letter  of  King's  Regulations. 
But  these  departures  from  rule  were  quite  in  accordance 
with  the  spirit  of  the  old  Army,  and  Lord  Kitchener  was 
ready  to  stand  over  any  of  them.  He  would  do  the  best 
he  could  for  our  division  on  the  old  lines.  He  would, 
I  am  certain,  have  said  that  he  had  done  the  best  thing 
possible  for  it  in  appointing  to  the  command  an  Irishman 
who  was  a  first-rate  soldier  and  a  first-rate  man  to  super- 
vise the  training  of  troops.  So  far  as  my  judgment  is 
able  to  go,  the  credit  for  making  the  Sixteenth  Division 
what  it  was  when  we  went  to  France  belongs  chiefly  to 
the  divisional  general  under  whom  we  trained. 

General  Parsons  had  the  gift,  which  appears  to  be 
rare  in  soldiers,  of  imparting  ideas  not  merely  about 
discipline  but  about  the  art  of  war  ;  and  he  had  an 
enthusiasm  which  communicated  itself.  But  these  were 
the  qualities  of  the  soldier  in  his  own  sphere,  with  which 
Redmond  had  no  contact.  What  Redmond  knew  was 
the  writer  of  letters  which  now  lie  before  me.  Running 
through  them  all  is  the  tone  of  a  soldier  in  authority 
who  accepts  assistance  from  a  friendly,  influential,  well- 
meaning  but  imperfectly  instructed  civilian.  There  is 
no  recognition  of  the  fact  that  Redmond  was  the  accepted 
leader  of  a  Volunteer  Force  numbering  over  a  hundred 
thousand  men  ;  no  glimpse  of  any  perception  that  morally, 
and  almost  officially,  Redmond  was  the  accredited  head 
of  the  nation  in  whose  name  the  division  was  being  raised 
— a  nation  to  which  the  statutory  right  of  self-government 
had  just  been  accorded. 


172  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

The  whole  position  was  extraordinary.  Legally  and 
theoretically,  Redmond  was  a  simple  member  of  Parlia- 
ment. Practically  and  morally,  he  was  the  head  of  Ire- 
land, exactly  as  Botha  was  of  South  Africa  ;  and  he  was 
trying  to  do  without  legal  powers  what  Botha  was  doing 
by  means  of  them.  He  was  far  more  than  the  Leader 
of  the  Opposition  in  Great  Britain  ;  for  in  Ireland  there 
really  was  no  Government.  Moral  authority,  which  must 
proceed  from  consent  of  the  governed,  the  Irish  Govern- 
ment had  not  possessed  for  many  a  long  day  ;  but  its 
legal  status  had  been  unimpeachable.  Now  even  that 
was  gone  ;  it  was  merely  a  stop-gap  contrivance,  carrying 
on  till  the  Act  of  Parliament  should  receive  fulfilment ; 
and,  as  a  bare  matter  of  fact,  it  was  powerless.  No 
operative  decision  of  any  moment  was  taken  or  could 
be  taken  at  this  moment  in  Ireland.  Everything  was 
referred  to  the  Cabinet,  and  that  body  had  no  power 
to  carry  out  a  popular  policy  in  Ireland. 

Redmond  had  put  forward  a  i)olicy  which  they  had 
accepted  in  principle.  It  could  only  be  carried  out 
through  him,  and  for  success  he  must  be  consulted  in 
detail.  Neither  Lord  Kitchener  nor  General  Parsons 
in  fact  recognized  the  status  which  this  implied.  They 
were  prepared  to  listen  to  suggestions  from  him  ;  they 
were  not  prepared  to  accept  guidance,  as  they  must  have 
done  had  he  been  Prime  Minister  of  the  country. 

It  was  impossible  that  Redmond's  attitude  in  dealing 
with  General  Parsons  should  not  imply  some  sense  of 
the  position  which  he  held  ;  equally  impossible,  from  the 
temper  and  mentality  of  the  man,  that  there  should  not 
be  in  General  Parsons's  letters  an  underlying  assertion 
that  in  military  matters  the  military  must  decide. 

The  correspondence  between  the  two  men  opened  by 
a  letter  from  Sir  Lawrence  Parsons,  who  had  just  estab- 
lished his  headquarters  at  Mallow  ;  and  its  chief  purpose 
was  to  direct  Redmond's  attention  to  the  fact  that  an 
Irish  Division  was  a  much  finer  and  nobler  unit  than  an 


THE   RAISING  OF  THE   IRISH  BRIGADES     173 

Irish  Brigade.  Two  points  in  it,  however,  are  of  interest. 
**  I  have  been  appointed,  by  Lord  Kitchener,"  said  General 
Parsons,  "  because  I  am  an  Irishman  and  understand 
my  countrymen."  Also,  "  I  have  had  a  considerable 
share  in  selecting  the  officers  of  the  Division,  almost 
all  Irishmen  of  every  political  and  religious  creed." 

What  lay  behind  the  first  of  these  sentences  was  a 
profound  conviction  that  the  writer  thoroughly  under- 
stood the  necessities  of  the  situation.  That  was  a 
disastrous  mistake.  To  understand  Ireland  at  such  a 
moment  was  difficult  for  anyone,  impossible  for  a  man 
who  had  not  been  in  close  touch  with  the  mental  condi- 
tion produced  by  all  these  extraordinary  happenings. 
The  effect  of  the  preparations  for  rebellion  in  Ulster, 
of  the  Curragh  incident,  and  of  the  collision  between 
troops  and  people  in  Dublin — the  effect  of  the  existence 
of  a  permitted  Nationalist  Volunteer  Force — the  effect 
of  Redmond's  appeal  :  these  were  three  completely 
novel  and  conflicting  currents  in  the  stream  of  Irish  life. 
Nobody  could  hope  to  estimate  these  developments  from 
a  general  view,  however  intelligent,  of  Irish  history  and 
character,  nor  even  from  the  most  intimate  and  sympa- 
thetic acquaintance  with  Irish  troops  of  the  old  Army. 

A  proof  of  the  unhappy  lack  of  comprehension  is 
furnished  by  the  second  sentence  I  have  quoted.  General 
Parsons  had  been  most  rightly  allowed  by  the  War  Office 
to  assist  in  selecting  officers  for  the  Division.  But  it 
had  never  occurred  to  either  party  to  consult  Redmond 
on  this  critical  matter.  Does  anyone  suppose  that 
Sir  Edward  Carson  had  no  voice  in  the  staffing  of  the 
Ulster  Division  ?  He  had  at  all  events  received  from 
the  first  a  clear  promise  that  all  professional  soldiers 
who  had  been  officers  in  the  Ulster  Volunteers  would 
be  officers  in  the  Division,  and  that  any  who  had  been 
mobilized  should  be  restored  to  their  associates  in  the 
Division. 

General    Parsons    brought   to    this   whole   matter   the 


174  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

fine  principle  that  no  man's  religious  or  political  beliefs 
should  stand  in  his  way.  He  omitted  to  consider  the 
effect  produced  on  the  situation  by  the  fact  that  the 
Ulster  Division  had  been  actually  allowed  to  exclude  all 
Catholics,  as  such,  and  to  accept  no  officer  who  was  not 
politically  in  sympathy  with  Unionist  Ulster.  Redmond 
had  not  the  least  wish  to  exclude  either  Protestants  or 
Unionists  ;  he  wanted  all  Irishmen  on  an  equality.  But 
he  was  bound  by  common  sense  and  by  a  perception  of 
realities  to  desire  that  Protestants  and  Unionists  should 
not  appear  to  monopolize  the  command. 

Not  one  of  the  three  brigadiers  appointed  was  generally 
known  in  Ireland,  personally  or  by  his  connections.  One 
was  an  Englishman.  Of  the  officers  originally  appointed 
not  one  in  five  was  a  Catholic.  No  Catholic  commanded 
a  battalion,  scarcely  half  a  dozen  were  field  officers.  The 
only  Catholic  field  officer  appointed  to  the  Division  who 
had  been  prominently  connected  with  the  Volunteers 
was  Lord  Fingall,  and  he  had  severed  his  connection 
with  that  body. 

All  this  was  a  terrible  blunder.  Whether  it  was  wise 
or  unwise  to  allow  the  formation  of  a  division  having 
the  peculiar  character  of  the  Ulster  Division  may  be 
argued — but  certainly  Redmond  never  took  exception 
to  it,  and  no  man  who  ever  saw  these  Ulstermen  in  the 
field  can  regret  its  inception.  But  once  it  was  formed, 
its  existence  created  a  situation  which  had  to  be  recog- 
nized. An  equivalent  ought  to  have  been  given  ;  but 
no  genuine  attempt  to  do  this  was  made. 

In  replying  to  Sir  Lawrence  Parsons,  Redmond  raised 
no  controversy  as  to  what  had  been  done  ;  he  was,  indeed, 
not  cognizant  of  the  facts.  But  he  addressed  himself 
from  the  first  to  making  friendly  suggestions. 

Amongst  other  things  he  referred  to  an  appeal  which 
Sir  Lawrence  Parsons  had  addressed  to  the  women  of 
Ireland,  that  they  should  provide  regimental  colours  for 
the  battalions  of  the  Division,    This  appeal  was  promptly 


THE  RAISING  OF  THE  IRISH  BRIGADES     175 

met,  to  Redmond's  great  delight — delight  which  was 
soon  changed  into  vexation,  for  the  War  Office  stepped 
in,  declared  the  proceeding  irregular,  and  prohibited  the 
holding  of  colours  by  any  temporary  battalion.  General 
Parsons  was  obliged  to  publish  an  explanation  which 
must  have  been  galling  to  himself,  and  which  went  far 
to  confirm  the  impression  that  the  War  Office,  with  all 
its  preoccupations,  had  time  to  keep  an  unfriendly  eye 
on  the  Nationalist  recruiting  effort. 

Another  trivial  matter  led  to  prolonged  and  irritating 
controversy.  Towards  the  end  of  October  the  Belfast 
and  Dublin  papers  announced  that  the  Army  Council 
had  approved  of  '*  an  Ulster  badge  similar  to  that  worn 
by  Ulster  Volunteers  "  as  a  cap  badge  for  all  troops  in 
the  Ulster  Division.  It  was  pointed  out  that  this  would 
have  the  effect  of  preserving  the  identity  of  the  Ulster 
Division.  Immediately,  and  not  unnaturally,  the  demand 
for  a  similar  concession  was  put  forward  on  behalf  of 
the  Sixteenth  Division.  General  Parsons  was  opposed, 
as  any  old  soldier  would  be,  to  a  variation  in  the  distin- 
guishing marks  of  old  and  famous  regiments.  He  did 
not  allow  for  the  fact  that  we  needed  to  attract  new 
soldiers  in  masses — men  who  as  yet  knew  nothing  of 
regimental  tradition.  Still,  he  co-operated  in  forwarding 
Redmond's  desire,  which  was  to  meet  a  widely  spread 
sentimental  demand.  Now  that  the  war  is  over,  many 
soldiers  argue  that  there  is  no  reason  in  the  nature  of 
things  why  Irish  regiments  should  not  have  a  clearly 
distinguishing  uniform,  as  the  Scots  or  the  Colonials  do. 
In  the  last  months,  when  recruiting  was  a  matter  of 
urgency.  Colonel  Lynch  induced  the  War  Office  to  consent 
to  equipping  an  Irish  Brigade  with  a  completely  dis- 
tinctive dress  ;  unhappily  the  pattern  was  (after  several 
months)  still  under  discussion  when  the  war  ended.  I 
have  little  doubt  that  from  the  point  of  view  of  recruiting 
even  the  badge,  to  say  nothing  of  a  distinctive  uniform, 
would  have  been  an  asset ;    I  have  no  doubt  at  all  that 


176  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

the  refusal  of  it  was  a  set-back,  because  it  was  a  refusal 
given  after  a  discussion  and  correspondence  which  lasted 
from  November  till  February.  The  most  interesting 
point,  however,  is  that  Lord  Kitchener  found  time  to 
occupy  himself  repeatedly  with  this  question  in  the  period 
between  the  first  and  second  battles  of  Ypres.  If  his 
intervention  had  been  judicious,  it  would  have  been  as 
impressive  as  the  spectacle  of  a  battery  elephant  stopping 
in  action  to  pick  up  a  pin  with  his  trunk. 

On  one  point  Redmond's  representations,  heartily 
backed  by  General  Parsons,  were  successful.  Catholic 
chaplains,  of  whom  no  adequate  number  were  at  first 
provided  for  Irish  troops,  were  secured.  It  is  pleasant 
to  note  that  Lord  Roberts,  who  before  the  war  had  been 
vehement  on  the  Ulster  side,  used  his  personal  influence 
to  support  this  application.  A  month  or  two  later,  when 
death  came  to  the  veteran,  dramatically,  among  the 
troops  in  France,  Redmond  told  the  House  of  Commons 
how  on  that  question  Lord  Roberts  had  met  him  in  the 
friendliest  way  and  endeavoured  to  arrange  for  attending 
the  great  meeting  at  the  Dublin  Mansion  House. 

On  another  matter  Redmond  was  able  to  assist  the 
equipment  of  the  Division.  He  suggested,  and  General 
Parsons  fully  admitted  the  value  of,  regimental  bands  ; 
but  the  War  Office  made  no  grants  for  them.  Redmond 
drew  upon  a  large  sum  which  had  been  placed  at  his  dis- 
posal by  a  private  individual  to  further  his  campaign, 
and  all  our  battalions  were  indebted  to  him  for  their 
fife  and  drum  equipment.  There  was,  in  short,  no  detail 
in  which  he  was  not  willing  and  anxious  to  assist  the 
Division  and  its  commander.  But  the  friction  between 
the  two  men  was  unmistakable. 

The  most  serious  cause  of  it  was  the  line  taken  by 
General  Parsons  about  the  appointment  of  officers.  He 
laid  down  a  rule,  which  I  think  would  have  had  excellent 
results  if  enforced  throughout  the  whole  of  the  new 
armies,    that    no    man    should    be   recommended   for    a 


THE  RAISING   OF  THE   IRISH  BRIGADES     177 

commission  without  previous  military  experience,  and  that 
candidates  lacking  that  experience  must  put  in  a  period 
of  service  in  the  ranks.  He  set  apart  a  special  company 
in  one  battalion,  the  7th  Leinsters,  to  which  such  men 
should  be  sent,  so  that  while  drilling  and  exercising 
with  the  rest  of  the  battalion,  and  enjoying  no  special 
privilege,  they  ate  and  slept  and  lived  together  in  their 
own  barrack  rooms. 

Yet  the  obstacle  thus  set  up  deterred  a  good  many 
of  the  less  zealous,  who  could  not  understand  why  that 
should  be  made  a  condition  in  the  Irish  Division  which 
was  not  so  in  the  Ulster  Division — nor,  indeed,  so  far  as 
I  know,  anywhere  else  at  that  time.  Men  who  had  been 
officers  of  Ulster  Volunteers  got  their  commissions  as  a 
matter  of  course  ;  the  officer  of  National  Volunteers 
had  to  prove  his  competence  in  the  cadet  company. 
General  Parsons  fully  admitted  this  difference  of  treat- 
ment, and  justified  it  by  saying  to  Redmond  that  in 
consequence  of  it  he  would  be  very  sorry  to  change  officers 
with  the  Ulster  Division.  One  cannot  refuse  to  admire 
such  a  spirit ;  but  he  ought  to  have  asked  himself  whether 
it  was  fair  to  impose  a  handicap  on  Redmond's  efforts. 
Everything  turned  on  getting  representative  young  men 
from  the  Volunteers,  and  from  the  correspondence  it 
appears  that  few  were  coming  from  the  South  and  West. 
From  the  North  they  poured  in.  In  our  47th  Brigade, 
the  6th  Royal  Irish  Regiment  was  mainly  composed  of 
Derry  Nationalists  ;  the  7th  Leinsters  and  the  6th  Con- 
naught  Rangers  were  almost  to  a  man  followers  of  Mr. 
Devlin  from  Belfast. 

Next  after  Redmond,  Mr.  Devlin  was  the  man  to 
whom  our  Division  owed  most.  But  the  first  and  the 
main  impetus  came  from  Redmond  himself.  He  spoke 
on  October  4th  at  Wexford,  the  capital  of  his  native 
county  ;  on  the  11th  at  Waterford,  his  own  constituency  ; 
on  the  18th  at  Kilkenny,  the  constituency  of  his  close 
friend   Pat   O'Brien.     A   week   later   he   was   at   Belfast 

13 


178  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

and  in  the  glens  of  Antrim,  among  the  Nationalists  of 
Ulster.  Then  Parliament  kept  him  for  a  few  weeks  ; 
in  December  he  was  back,  and  sjDoke  at  Tuam  and  in 
Limerick.  Everywhere  the  Volunteers  turned  out  in 
great  numbers  to  receive  him  ;  and  to  them  his  appeal 
was  primarily  addressed. 

At  Wexford  he  laid  stress  on  Mr.  Asquith's  pledge 
that  the  Volunteers  should  remain  as  a  recognized  per- 
manent force  for  the  defence  of  the  country,  and  this 
led  him  to  raise  frankly  the  question  of  control.  Who 
should  have  authority  over  Volunteers  in  a  State  ? 
Surely  the  elected  and  responsible  government.  But 
pending  Home  Rule,  "  the  policy  and  control  of  the 
Volunteers  must  rest  with  the  elected  representatives 
of  the  country." 

More  generally,  he  reminded  them  that  he  had  always 
spoken  of  the  possibility  of  some  great  political  con- 
vulsion that  might  destroy  their  plans.  "  Nothing  but 
an  earthquake  can  now  prevent  Home  Rule,"  he  had 
said.  "  The  outbreak  of  this  overwhelming  war  might 
easily  have  overwhelmed  Home  Rule.  But  we  have 
survived  it." 

And  he  went  on  to  argue  that  the  delay  might  be  a 
blessing  in  disguise.  Civil  war  between  Irishmen  had 
always  seemed  to  him  an  impossibility.  That  impossi- 
bility was  now  universally  admitted.  In  a  passage  of 
unusual  heat  he  denounced  the  "  so-called  statesmen  " 
who  came  over  unasked  to  our  country  to  inflame 
feelings — as  Mr.  Bonar  Law  had  done  ;  and  he  appealed 
to  all  sections  "  to  enable  us  to  utilize  the  interval  before 
a  Home  Rule  Parliament  assembles  to  unite  all  Irishmen 
under  a  Home  Rule  Government." 

At  Waterford  he  was  largely  occupied  with  repelling 
the  charge  that  he  and  his  colleagues  had  made  a  bargain 
with  the  Government  to  ship  Irish  Volunteers  overseas 
to  fight  whether  they  would  or  no.  This  was  the  line  on 
which  opposition  was  developing,  and  it  was  assisted  by 


THE  RAISING  OF  THE  IRISH  BRIGADES     179 

articles  in  the  English  Press,  which  laid  it  down  that 
unless  the  Irish  furnished  a  sufficiency  of  recruits,  Home 
Rule  should  be  repealed. 

An  extension  of  this  argument,  that  Redmond  was 
buying  Home  Rule  with  the  blood  of  young  Irishmen, 
raised  the  question  whether  Home  Rule  was  worth  the 
price.  While  the  Bill  was  not  yet  law,  it  was  a  flag,  a 
symbol.  Once  it  became  an  Act,  men's  attitude  changed  ; 
they  turned  to  criticizing  what  they  had  got ;  and  one 
powerful  newspaper,  bitterly  hostile  to  the  Parliamentary 
party,  expended  much  ingenuity  in  exaggerating  the 
limitations  of  what  had  been  gained.  While  one  set  of 
critics  endeavoured  to  show  how  miserable  was  the  price 
obtained,  another  dwelt  on  the  unrighteousness  of  making 
such  a  bargain  without  Ireland's  consent.  In  Redmond's 
speech  at  Kilkenny  there  was  a  note  of  resentment. 
He  refused  at  any  great  crisis  to  consider  "  what  might 
please  the  gallery  or  the  crowd,  or  might  spare  him  the 
insults  of  a  handful  of  cornerboys." 

But  the  kernel  of  all  his  thought  was  put  into  one 
sentence  by  him  at  Belfast.  "  Tlie  proper  place  to  guard 
Ireland  is  on  the  battlefields  of  France."  It  was  from 
Belfast  after  this  meeting  that  the  first  strildng  demon- 
stration of  response  came — organized  and  inspired  by 
Mr.  DevHn.  On  November  20th  nearly  a  full  battalion 
of  recruits,  many  National  Volunteers,  entrained  for 
Fermoy  ;  a  week  later  they  were  followed  by  another 
great  detachment.  The  example  spread ;  and  when 
Redmond  spoke  at  Limerick  on  December  20th,  the 
Irish  Times  in  a  friendly  leading  article  admitted  that 
'•  the  National  Volunteers  were  now  coming  forward  in 
large  numbers  and  the  Irish  Brigade  was  going  to  be  a 
credit  to  the  country."  This  was  a  very  different  note 
from  that  which  had  come  from  Unionist  quarters  at 
earlier  stages. 


180  JOHN   REDMOND'S   LAST   YEARS 


III 

So  far  as  recruiting  went,  Redmond  had  won.  He  was 
sure  of  making  good  to  England.  But  in  what  concerned 
making  good  to  Ireland,  he  had  no  progress  to  report. 
He  stated  that  already  nearly  16,500  men  from  the  Volun- 
teers had  joined  the  Army,  and  he  could  not  understand 
why  Government  was  so  chary  of  giving  assistance  to 
train  and  equip  this  force.  There  was  no  doubt  as  to 
the  mass  of  men  available.  Figures  supplied  by  the 
police  to  the  Chief  Secretary  estimated  that  between 
September  24th,  when  the  split  took  place,  and  October 
31st,  out  of  170,000  Volunteers,  only  a  trifle  over  12,000 
adhered  to  Professor  MacNeill. 

But  in  Dublin  the  opponents  were  nearly  2,000  out 
of  6,700  ;  and  two  strong  battalions  went  almost  solid 
against  Redmond.  These  battalions,  along  with  the 
Citizens'  Army,  were  destined  to  alter  the  course  of  Irish 
history.  It  was  specially  true  of  them,  but  true  gener- 
ally of  all  the  minority  who  left  Redmond,  that  they  were 
kept  together  by  a  resolute  and  determined  group  who 
had  a  clear  purpose. 

The  "  Irish  Volunteers,"  as  the  dissentients  called 
themselves,  were  made  to  feel  that  they  were  a  minority, 
and  an  unpopular  minority  in  more  than  one  instance. 
In  Galway,  when  they  turned  out  to  parade  the  streets, 
they  were  driven  off  with  casualties — retaliation  for  their 
interference  with  our  meeting  in  September.  In  Dundalk 
there  was  a  somewhat  similar  occurrence.  But  they 
got  more  than  their  own  back  one  day  in  November 
by  a  bold  cou2) — forerunner  of  many.  Ninety  rifles 
belonging  to  the  National  Volunteers  were  being  moved 
in  a  cart  from  one  place  to  another.  Half  a  dozen  men 
armed  with  revolvers  held  up  the  cart  and  its  driver  and 
carried  off  the  rifles.  At  their  Convention,  held  in  the 
end  of  October,  Professor  MacNeill  said  :    "  They  would 


THE  RAISING   OF  THE   IRISH   BRIGADES      181 

go  on  with  the  work  of  organizing,  training  and  equipping 
a  Volunteer  force  for  the  service  of  Ireland  in  Ireland, 
and  such  a  force  might  yet  be  the  means  of  saving  Home 
Rule  from  disaster,  and  of  compelling  the  Home  Rule 
Government  to  keep  faith  with  Ireland  without  the 
exaction  of  a  price  in  blood." 

That  forecast  has  not  as  yet  realized  itself  ;  and  many 
of  us  think  that  the  chief  achievement  of  this  section 
has  been  to  turn  to  waste  a  heavy  price  that  was  paic^^^ 
in  blood  by  other  men  for  the  sake  of  Ireland., '''But 
unquestionably  they  were,  though  the  minority,  far  more 
of  a  living  reality  than  the  mass  of  the  original  force — 
and  for  a  simple  reason.  Their  purj)ose,  whether  good 
or  bad,  was  within  their  own  control.  The  purpose  of 
the  majority  was  to  carry  out  Redmond's  policy — which 
was  to  make  the  Volunteers  part  of  an  Irish  army  of 
which  the  striking  force  was  designed  to  defend  Ireland 
on  the  battlefields  of  Flanders.  But  to  carry  out  that 
policy  the  National  Volunteers  must  be  accepted  as  a 
purely  local  Irish  military  organization  for  home  defence 
— controlled,  in  the  absence  of  a  popularly  elected  Irish 
Government,  by  the  elected  Irish  representatives.  The 
War  Ofifice  thwarted  that  policy.  Lord  Kitchener  would 
not  accept  it.  He  continued  to  be  of  the  opinion  that 
by  equipping  Redmond's  followers  he  would  be  arming 
enemies. 

It  is  worth  noting  that  one  of  the  ablest  and  most 
detached  students  of  Irish  affairs  was  wholly  on  Redmond's 
side.  Lord  Dunraven,  appealing  on  behalf  cf  "  the  new 
Irish  Brigade,"  pointed  out  that  both  sides  of  Redmond's 
policy  must  be  accepted.  "  No  scheme  which  fails  to 
take  some  account  of  the  National  Volunteer  Force  can 
do  justice  to  what  Ireland  can  give,"  he  wrote.  But 
was  there  everywhere  a  desire  to  do  justice  to  what 
Ireland  could  give — and  was  willing  to  give  ?  Redmond 
was  warned  in  those  days  by  an  influential  correspondent 
in  England  that  a  deliberate  policy  was  being  pursued 


182  JOHN  REDMONDS   LAST   YEARS 

by  the  opponents  of  Home  Rule,  who  undoubtedly  had 
strong  backing  in  the  War  Office.  The  National  Volun- 
teers were  to  become  the  objects  of  derision  and  contempt, 
which  would  extend  to  himself.  By  keeping  the  Volun- 
teers out  of  active  participation  in  war  service,  it  could 
be  proved  that  Redmond  did  not  speak  for  Ireland  or 
represent  Ireland ;  that  the  Irish  were  raising  unreal 
objections  so  as  to  keep  an  excuse  for  avoiding  danger. 
It  was  urged  on  him  that  he  should  press  for  the  extension 
of  the  Territorial  Act  to  Ireland  and  endeavour  to  bring 
his  men  in  on  this  footing. 

There  were  two  difficulties  in  the  way  of  this  scheme 
which  nevertheless  attracted  him  strongly.  The  first 
was  that  enlistment  in  the  Territorials  for  home  service 
had  been  stopped — so  that  the  proposal  had  little  advan- 
tage, if  any,  over  enlistment  in  the  Irish  brigades.  The 
second  was  due  to  the  Volunteers  themselves,  many  of 
whom,  though  willing  to  serve  in  the  war,  M^ere  unwilling 
to  take  the  oath  of  allegiance. 

There  were  limits  to  the  length  to  which  Redmond 
felt  himself  able  to  go,  and  he  never  dealt  with  this 
objection  by  argument.  The  example  which  he  set  was 
plain  to  all.  He  joined  in  singing  "  God  save  the  King," 
in  drinking  the  King's  health,  and  at  Aughavanagh  now 
he  flew  the  Union  Jack  beside  the  Green  flag.  He  was 
willing  to  take  part  in  any  demonstration  which  implied 
that  Nationalist  Ireland  under  its  new  legal  status  accepted 
its  lot  in  the  British  Empire  fully  and  without  reserve. 
It  was  superfluous  for  him  to  argue  that  Nationalists 
might  consistently  take  the  oath  of  allegiance  when 
Nationalists  were  pledging  their  lives  in  the  King's  service 
beside  every  other  kind  of  citizen  in  the  British  Empire. 

Over  and  above  his  own  example  was  the  example 
of  his  brother  and  his  son.  On  November  23rd  Willie 
Redmond  addressed  a  great  meeting  in  Cork  and  told 
them,  "  I  won't  say  to  you  go,  but  come  with  me."  He 
wa-s  then  fiftv- three — and  for  most  men  it  would  have 


THE  RAISING  OF  THE  IRISH  BRIGADES     183 

been  "  too  late  a  week."  But  no  man  was  ever  more 
instinctively  a  soldier,  and  to  soldiering  ho  had  gone  by 
instinct  as  a  boy.  He  was  an  officer  in  the  Wexford 
Militia  for  a  year  or  two,  till  politics  drove  him  out  of 
that  service  and  drew  him  into  another.  Now  he  went 
to  the  war  gravely  but  joyfully.  I  think  those  days 
did  not  bring  into  relief  any  more  picturesque  or 
sympathetic  figure. 

One  thing  ought  to  be  said.  Mr.  Devlin  wished  to 
join  also,  but  Redmond  held  that  he  could  not  be  spared 
from  Ireland,  where  his  influence  was  enormous  ;  and 
he  was  placed  in  a  somewhat  unfair  position,  even  though 
everyone  who  knew  him  knew  that  his  chief  attribute 
was  personal  courage.  But  he  was  indispensable  for  the 
work  which  had  to  be  done,  of  helping  at  this  strange 
crisis  to  keep  Ireland  peaceful  and  united  at  a  time  when 
Government  was  at  its  lowest  ebb  of  authority. 

Trouble  threatened.  On  October  11th,  the  anniversary 
of  Parnell's  death,  three  bodies  of  Volunteers  turned  out 
in  Dublin — the  National  Volunteers,  the  Irish  Volunteers, 
and  the  Citizen  Army.  A  collision  occurred  which  might 
easily  have  become  serious.  This  passed  off,  but  early 
in  December  the  Government  suppressed  three  or  four 
of  the  openly  anti-British  papers,  which  were,  of  course, 
still  more  virulent  against  Redmond.  They  reappeared 
under  other  names.  But  a  meeting  of  protest  against 
the  suppression  was  held  outside  Liberty  Hall.  Mr. 
Larkin  had,  by  this  time,  gone  to  America.  His  chief 
colleague,  Mr.  James  Connolly,  who  was  the  brain  of  the 
Irish  Labour  Movement,  presided,  and  at  the  close  de- 
clared that  the  meeting  had  been  held  under  the  protection 
of  an  armed  company  of  the  Citizen  Army  posted  in  the 
windows  and  on  the  roof  of  Liberty  Hall.  Had  the  police 
or  military  attempted  to  disperse  the  meeting,  he  said, 
**  those  rifles  would  not  have  been  silent." 

Ulster  was  not  the  only  place  where  armed  men  thought 
themselves  entitled  to  resist  coercion. 


184  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LA8T   YEARS 

Dublin  was  the  more  dangerous  because  the  war,  which 
created  so  much  employment  in  Great  Britain,  brought 
no  new  trade  to  Ireland,  outside  of  Belfast.  Agriculture 
prospered,  but  the  towns  knew  only  a  rise  of  prices. 
Redmond  began  with  high  hopes,  which  Mr.  Lloyd  George 
fostered,  of  rapidly-developing  munition  works,  which 
would  at  the  close  of  hostilities  leave  the  foundation  for 
industrial  communities.  Here  again,  however,  Redmond's 
representations  were  in  vain.  When  the  heavy  extra 
tax  on  beer  and  sj^irits  was  levied  by  the  first  supple- 
mentary Budget,  he  opposed  it  angrily  : 

*'  You  are  doing  some  shipbuilding  at  Belfast,  you 
are  making  a  few  explosives  at  Arklow,  you  are  buying 
some  woollen  goods  from  some  of  the  smaller  manufac- 
turers, but  apart  from  that,  the  bulk  of  the  hundreds 
of  millions  of  borrowed  money  which  you  are  spending 
on  the  war  is  being  spent  in  England  and  in  increasing 
the  income  of  your  country." 

This  tax  on  alcohol  would  curtail  the  most  important 
urban  industry  of  the  South  and  West  of  Ireland,  and 
he  feared  that  it  was  the  old  story  of  crushing  Ireland's 
trade  under  the  wheel  of  British  interests. 

Here  again  Redmond  could  only  plead  with  the  Irish 
Government  that  they,  in  their  turn,  should  plead  with 
the  Imperial  authorities.  He  should  have  been  able  to 
act  in  his  own  right  as  the  head  of  an  Irish  Ministry, 
knowing  the  importance  of  providing  employment  at 
such  a  time.  He  saw  the  need  and  how  to  meet  it ;  but 
he  had  none  of  the  resources  of  power.  As  compared 
with  the  other  men  who  occupied,  in  the  public  eye,  a 
rank  equivalent  to  his — with  General  Botha,  for  instance 
— he  was  like  a  commander  of  those  Russian  armies 
which  had  to  take  the  field  against  Germans  with  sticks 
and  pikes. 

Yet  power  he  had — power  over  the  heart  and  mind  of 
Ireland — the  power  which  was  given  him  by  the  response 


THE   RAISING   OF  THE   IRISH  BRIGADES     185 

to  his  appeal.  From  January  onwards  the  Sixteenth 
Division  grew  steadily  and  strongly.  Recruiting  began  to 
get  on  a  better  basis.  The  appointment  of  Sir  Hedley  Le 
Bas  in  charge  of  this  propaganda  brought  about  a  healthy 
change  in  methods.  Appeals  were  used  devised  for  Ireland, 
and  not,  as  heretofore,  simple  replicas  of  the  English 
article.  Heart-breaking  instances  of  stupidity  were  still 
of  daily  occurrence,  but  imagination  and  insight  began 
to  have  some  play  ;  and  there  was  no  longer  the  complete 
separation  which  had  existed  between  the  effort  of 
Redmond  and  his  colleagues  and  the  effort  of  men  like 
Lord  Meath.  In  January  Willie  Redmond  was  posted 
to  his  battalion,  the  6th  Royal  Irish,  at  Fermoy,  where 
the  47th  Brigade  had  its  headquarters.  In  his  case,  as 
in  my  own,  there  had  been  much  avoidable  and  most 
undesirable  delay  ;  but  his  presence  with  the  Division 
was  worth  an  immense  deal.  There  was  delay  also  about 
his  younger  namesake,  John  Redmond's  son — who  was 
for  a  long  time  refused  a  commission  in  the  Division 
in  whose  formation  his  father  had  played  so  great  a  part. 
Naturally,  trained  speakers  who  had  joined  the  Division 
were  utilized  for  recruiting  purposes.  Willie  Redmond 
did  comparatively  little  of  this  work.  It  is  no  light  job 
to  take  over  command  of  a  company,  if  you  mean  really 
to  command  it ;  and  with  him,  from  the  moment  he  joined 
everything  came  second  to  his  military  duty.  But 
private  soldiers  have  a  less  exacting  time,  and  there  was 
scarcely  one  week  of  my  three  months  in  the  7th  Leinsters 
in  which  I  did  not  spend  the  Saturday  and  Sunday 
on  this  business — generally  in  company  with  the  most 
brilliant  speaker,  taking  all  in  all,  that  I  have  ever  heard. 
Kettle,  then  a  lieutenant  in  the  battalion,  was  wit,  essayist, 
poet  and  orator  :  whether  he  was  most  a  wit  or  most 
an  orator  might  be  argued  for  a  night  without  conclusion  ; 
but  as  talker  or  as  speaker  he  had  few  equals.  He  was 
the  son  of  a  veteran  Nationalist,  who  had  taken  a  lead 
in  Parnell's  day  ;    but  the  farmer's  son  had  become  the 


186  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

most  characteristic  product  of  Ireland's  capital,  which, 
rich  or  poor,  squalid  or  splendid,  is  a  metropolis — a  centre 
of  many  interests,  a  forcing-house  of  many  ideas.  Nothing 
in  Ireland  is  less  English  than  Dublin,  and  its  tone  differs 
from  that  of  England  in  having  active  sympathy  with 
the  continental  mind. 

Kettle  was  always  to  some  extent  in  revolt  against 
the  theories  of  the  Gaelic  League,  which  he  thought 
tended  to  make  Ireland  insular  morally  as  well  as 
materially.  He  was  a  good  European  because  he  was  a 
good  Irishman  ;  and  because  he  was  both,  he  was,  though 
largely  educated  in  Germany,  a  fierce  partisan  of  France. 

More  than  all  this,  he  had  seen  with  his  own  eyes  the 
actual  martyrdom  of  Belgium.  Sent  out  by  Redmond 
to  purchase  rifles,  he  was  in  the  country  when  Antwerp 
was  occupied,  and  he  wrote  with  passion  of  what  he 
heard,  of  what  he  saw.  Louvain  to  him  was  more  than 
a  mere  name.  All  the  Catholic  in  him,  and  all  the  Irish 
Catholic,  for  Ireland's  association  with  Louvain  was 
long  and  intimate,  rose  up  in  fury ;  he  went  through 
Ireland  carrying  the  fiery  cross. 

Everywhere  we  went  we  had  friendly  and  even 
enthusiastic  audiences  ;  the  only  place  where  I  met  any 
suggestion  of  hostility  was  at  Killarney,  and  there  it 
took  the  form  of  avoiding  our  meeting.  We  were  cheered 
and  encouraged — but  we  did  not  get  many  recruits,  so 
to  say,  on  the  nail.  Yet  they  came,  generally  dribbling 
in  afterwards.  From  one  small  meeting  in  county 
Waterford  we  came  away  badly  disappointed,  having 
thought  an  effect  was  made,  yet  we  did  not  take  a  single 
man.  I  heard  later  that  within  the  next  fortnight  thirty 
men  from  that  parish  had  come  in  by  ones  and  twos  to 
sign  on — but  at  a  town  several  miles  away.  Local  pres- 
sure, personal  not  political,  was  against  us,  especially 
that  of  the  mothers  ;  and  there  was  a  shyness  about 
taking  this  plunge  into  the  unknown. 

One  exception  stands    out,  iu   my  mind,  unlike   the 


THE  RAISING  OF  THE  IRISH  BRIGADES     187 

general  run  of  these  gatherings.  It  was  the  first  field 
day  of  our  brigade,  when,  dressed  in  the  khaki  that  had 
at  last  been  served  out,  we  mustered  on  the  race-course 
at  Fernioy,  five  thousand  strong  ;  and  I  went  from  the 
review  to  the  train  for  Waterford,  There  was  no  mis- 
taking the  temper  of  Redmond's  constituency  ;  we  got 
men  there  in  hundreds,  including  a  score  or  so  of  cadets 
— young  men  of  education — for  our  special  company  of 
the  Leinsters,  which  was  filling  up  fast. 

At  that  meeting  we  had  one  force  with  us  which  was 
not  often  active  on  our  side.  The  Bishop  of  Waterford 
was  strong  for  the  war  ;  the  leading  parish  priest  of  the 
town  took  the  chair  and  spoke  straight  and  plain,  while 
one  of  the  Regulars,  a  Carmelite  friar,  made  a  speech 
which  was  among  the  most  eloquent  that  I  have  ever 
listened  to. 

At  the  beginning  of  April  I  was  gazetted  to  a  lieutenancy 
in  the  6th  Connaught  Rangers,  and  began  to  know  the 
Division  from  another  aspect.  Broadly  speaking,  the 
men  with  whom  I  had  been  sharing  a  hut  were  Nationalist 
by  opinion  and  by  tradition — though  ))y  no  means  all 
Catholics.  There  were  Unionists,  but  they  were  few. 
In  the  society  which  I  now  joined — a  joint  mess  of  the 
Royal  Irish  and  the  Rangers — matters  were  different. 

The  personnel  of  the  6th  Royal  Irish  was  strongly 
characteristic  of  the  old  Army.  The  commanding  officer, 
Curzon,  was  of  Irish  descent,  but  of  little  Irish  associa- 
tion ;  his  second  in  command  was  an  Irish  Protestant 
gentleman  of  a  pleasant  ordinary  type.  The  senior 
company  commander  was  an  Englishman.  As  an  offset, 
Willie  Redmond  had  one  company,  and  another  was 
commanded  by  an  ex-guardsman,  who  had  been  a  chief 
personage  in  the  Derry  Volunteers,  and  brought  so  many 
of  them  with  him  that  General  Parsons  gave  him  a 
captaincy  straight  off. 

In  my  own  battalion,  no  Catholic  had  then  the  rank  of 
captain.    The  colonel  and  the  adjutant  belonged  to  well- 


188  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

known  families  in  the  North  of  Ireland,  deeply  involved 
in  Covenanting  politics.  My  own  company  commander 
was  a  very  gallant  little  Dublin  barrister,  who,  before 
the  war,  had  exerted  on  English  platforms  against  Home 
Rule  the  gift  of  racy  eloquence  which  he  now  devoted 
to  recruiting.  Not  half  a  dozen  of  the  subalterns  would 
have  described  themselves  as  Nationalists. 

It  is  easy  to  see  how  all  this  could  be  represented,  and 
was  represented,  to  the  outside  public  of  Ireland.  From 
the  inside,  one  thing  was  clear.  In  our  battalion  every 
man  desired  the  success  of  the  Division,  and  more  par- 
ticularly of  the  Connaught  Rangers,  absolutely  with  a 
whole  heart.  Anything  said  or  done  that  could  have 
offended  the  men — practically  all  Catholic  and  Nationalist 
— would  have  drawn  the  most  condign  chastisement 
from  our  commanding  officer.  I  never  heard  of  any 
man  or  officer  in  the  battalion  who  would  have  desired 
to  change  its  colonel ;  we  were  fortunate,  and  we  knew 
it.  There  was  very  little  political  discussion,  and  what 
there  was  turned  chiefly  on  the  question  how  far  Redmond 
might  be  held  to  speak  for  Ireland.  So  far  as  Redmond 
himself  was  concerned,  I  think  there  were  few,  if  any, 
who  did  not  count  it  an  honour  to  meet  him — and  some 
who  had  never  been  won  to  him  before  were  won  to  him 
for  his  brother's  sake. 

Looking  back  on  it  all,  it  is  clear  to  me  that  a  change 
wrought  itself  in  that  society.  I  do  not  know  one  sur- 
vivor of  those  men  who  does  not  desire  that  accomplish- 
ment should  be  given  to  the  desire  of  those  whom  they 
led.  In  not  a  few  cases  one  might  put  the  change  higher  ; 
some  opinions  as  to  what  was  good  for  Ireland  were 
profoundly  affected. 

Yet  this  also  is  true.  The  atmosphere  of  the  mess 
was  one  in  which  Willie  Redmond  found  himself  shy 
and  a  stranger.  He  had  lived  all  his  life  in  an  intimate 
circle  of  Nationalist  belief.  Knowing  the  other  side  in 
the  House  of  Commons,  where  many  of  his  oldest  friends 


THE   RAISING   OF  THE   IRISH   BRIGADES     180 

and  the  men  he  liked  best  (Colonel  Lockwood  comes 
most  readily  to  my  mind)  wore  political  opponents,  he 
had  nevertheless  always  lived  with  people  in  agreement 
with  his  views  ;  and  you  could  not  better  describe  the 
atmosphere  of  our  mess  than  by  saying  that  it  was  a 
society  in  which  every  one  liked  and  respected  Willie 
Redmond,  but  one  in  which  he  never  really  was  himself. 
He  was  only  himself  with  the  men. 

In  short,  so  far  as  the  officers  were  concerned,  our 
Division  was  not  a  counterpart  to  the  Ulster  Division  ; 
it  was  not  Irish  in  the  sense  that  the  other  was  Ulster. 
No  attempt  was  made  to  make  it  so,  and  General  Parsons 
would  have  quite  definitely  rejected  any  such  ideal — 
though  less  fiercely  than  he  would  have  repudiated  the 
idea  of  handicapping  a  man  for  his  opinions  or  his  creed. 
Yet  many  persons  without  design,  and  some  with  a 
purpose,  spread  broadcast  the  belief  that  Catholics  and 
Nationalists  as  such  were  relegated  to  a  position  of 
inferiority  in  the  command  of  this  Catholic  and  Nationalist 
Division. 

The  worst  of  our  difficulties  lay  in  the  long  inherited 
suspicions  of  the  Irish  mind.  At  a  recruiting  meeting 
one  would  argue  in  appealing  to  Nationalists  that  the 
Home  Rule  Act  was  a  covenant  on  which  we  were  in 
honour  bound  to  act,  and  that  every  man  who  risked 
his  life  on  the  faith  of  that  covenant  set  a  seal  upon  it 
which  would  never  be  disregarded.  The  listeners  would 
applaud,  but  after  the  meeting  one  and  another  would 
come  up  privately  and  say  :  "  Are  you  sure  now  they 
aren't  fooling  us  again  ?  "  The  Sinn  Fein  propaganda, 
always  shrewdly  conducted,  did  not  fail  to  emphasize 
the  pronouncement  of  the  Tory  Press  that  there  should 
be  no  Home  Rule  because  Ireland  had  failed  to  come 
forward  ;  or  to  point  the  moral  of  Mr.  Bonar  Law's 
excursion  to  Belfast,  with  its  violent  asseveration  that 
Ulster  should  be  backed  without  limit  in  opposition  to 
control  by  an  Irish  Parliament.     Ireland,  always  suspect, 


190  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

has  learnt  to  be  profoundly  suspicious  ;  and  suspicion 
is  the  form  of  prophecy  which  has  most  tendency  to 
fulfil  itself. 

In  one  part  of  the  Irish  race,  however,  this  cold  para- 
lysis of  distrust  had  no  oi^eration.  The  Irish  in  Great 
Britain,  always  outdoing  all  others  in  the  keenness  of 
their  Nationalism,  were  nearer  the  main  current  of  the 
war,  and  were  more  in  touch  with  the  truth  about  English 
feeling.  They  had  a  double  impulse,  as  Redmond  had  ; 
they  saw  how  to  serve  their  own  cause  in  serving  Europe's 
freedom  ;  and  their  response  was  magnificent.  Mr. 
T.  P.  O'Connor  probably  raised  more  recruits  by  his 
personal  appeal  than  any  other  man  in  England. 

A  great  part  of  Redmond's  correspondence  in  these 
months  came  from  Irishmen  in  England  who  were  joining 
as  Irishmen,  and  who  had  great  difficulty  in  making  their 
way  to  our  Division.  Many  thousands  had  already 
enlisted  elsewhere  ;  hundreds,  at  least,  tried  to  join  the 
Sixteenth  Division,  and  failed  to  get  there.  But  there  was 
one  instance  to  which  attention  should  be  directed.  In 
Newcastle-on-Tyne  a  movement  was  set  on  foot  to  raise 
Tyneside  battalions,  including  one  of  Irish.  Mr.  O'Connor 
went  down,  and  the  upshot  was  that  four  Irish  battalions 
were  raised.  They  were  in  existence  by  January  1,  1915, 
when  General  Parsons  was  already  writing  that  unless 
Irishmen  could  be  found  to  fill  up  the  Division,  we  must 
submit  to  the  disgrace  of  having  it  made  up  by  English 
recruits.  The  obvious  answer  was  to  annex  the  Tyneside 
Irish  Brigade.  Redmond,  moreover,  held  that  to  bring 
over  this  brigade  to  train  in  Ireland,  and  to  incorporate  it 
bodily  in  the  Sixteenth  Division,  would  please  the  Tyneside 
men — for  a  tremendous  welcome  would  have  greeted  them 
in  their  own  country — and  would  have  an  excellent  effect 
on  Irish  opinion  generally.  But  the  proposal  was  rigor- 
ously opposed  by  the  War  Office.  It  was  argued  that 
these  men  had  enlisted  technically  as  Northumberland 
Fusiliers  and  Northumberland  Fusiliers  they  must  remain. 


THE  RAISING  OF  THE  IRISH  BRIGADES     191 

In  reality,  as  far  as  one  can  judge,  the  War  Office  were 
penny  wise  and  pound  foolish.  "  We  have  got  these 
men,"  they  said,  "  and  we  have  a  promise  from  Redmond 
to  fill  a  Division.  Why  relieve  him  of  one-third  of  his 
task  ?  " 

Redmond  knew,  and  wo  all  knew,  that  the  essential 
was  to  get  our  Division  complete  and  into  the  field  at 
the  earliest  possible  moment.  He  had  confidence  that 
once  they  got  to  work  they  would  make  a  name  for  them- 
selves, which  would  be  the  best  attraction  for  recruits.  Let 
it  be  remembered  that  at  this  moment  popular  expecta- 
tion put  the  end  of  the  war  about  July.  When  I  joined 
the  Rangers  in  April  1915,  our  mess  was  full  of  young 
officers  threatening  to  throw  up  their  commissions  and 
enlist  in  some  battalion  which  would  give  them  the  chance 
of  seeing  a  fight.  We  could  not  expect  to  move  to  France 
before  August,  and  by  that  time  all  that  we  could  hope 
would  be  to  form  part  of  the  army  of  occupation.  Rumour 
was  rife,  too,  that  the  Division  would  be  broken  up  and 
utilized  for  draft-finding,  that  it  would  never  see  France 
as  a  unit.  All  this  talk  came  back  to  Redmond  and 
increased  his  anxiety  to  make  the  work  complete. 

He  held,  and  I  think  rightly,  that  the  whole  machinery 
of  recruiting  worked  against  us  ;  that  every  officer  had 
instructions  to  send  no  man  to  the  Sixteenth  Division  who 
could  be  got  into  a  draft-finding  reserve  battalion.  Know- 
ing what  we  know,  I  cannot  blame  them  ;  but  the  game 
was  not  fairly  played.  A  man  would  come  in  and  say 
he  wanted  to  join  the  Irish  Brigade.  "  Which  regiment  ?  " 
Often  he  might  not  realize  that  a  brigade  was  made  up 
of  regiments,  but  if  he  knew  and  answered,  for  instance, 
"  The  Dublins,"  he  was  more  likely  than  not  to  be  shipped 
off  to  the  Curragh,  where  the  reserve  of  the  regular 
battalions  was  kept,  instead  of  to  Buttevant,  where  our 
Dublins  were  in  training. 

Still,  with  all  our  troubles,  things  were  marching  ahead 
in  that  April  of  1915  ;    recruits  were  coming  in  to  the 


192  JOHN   REDxMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

tune  of  1,500  a  week.  Then  came  a  political  crisis  and 
the  formation  of  a  Coalition  Government.  Redmond 
was  asked  to  take  a  post  in  it.  The  letter  in  which  the 
invitation  was  conveyed  made  it  clear  that  the  post 
could  not  be  an  Irish  office. 

Redmond  refused.  He  said  to  me  afterwards  that 
under  no  conditions  did  he  think  he  could  have  accepted. 
But  he  added,  "  If  I  had  been  Asquith  and  had  wished 
to  make  it  as  difficult  as  possible  to  refuse,  I  should 
have  offered  a  seat  in  the  Cabinet  without  portfolio 
and  without  salary." 

He  was  well  aware  how  many  and  how  unscrupulous 
were  his  enemies  in  Ireland  ;  he  was  not  prepared  to 
give  them  the  opportunity  of  saying  that  he  had  got 
his  price  for  the  blood  of  young  Irishmen  and  the  betrayal 
of  his  principles.  Even  apart  from  the  question  of  salary, 
the  tradition  against  acceptance  of  office  under  Govern- 
ment till  Ireland's  claim  was  satisfied  would  have  been 
very  hard  to  break.  Yet  Redmond  saw  fully  how  dis- 
astrous would  be  the  effect  on  Irish  opinion  if  he  were 
not  in  the  Government  and  Sir  Edward  Carson  was. 

Knowing  Ireland  as  he  did,  he  knew  that  the  accept- 
ance of  Sir  Edward  Carson  as  a  colleague  would  be  taken 
in  Ireland  to  imply  that  the  Government  had  abandoned 
its  support  of  Home  Rule.  Ireland  would  assume  that 
the  Ulster  leader  would  not  come  in  except  on  his  own 
terms.  Redmond  made  the  strongest  representations 
that  he  could  to  the  Prime  Minister  to  exclude  both 
Irish  parties  to  the  unresolved  dispute.  But  Sir  Edward 
Carson  in  those  days  was  making  himself  very  disagree- 
able in  the  House  of  Commons  and  Mr.  Asquith,  as  usual, 
followed  the  line  of  least  resistance. 

The  effect  of  the  Coalition  as  formed  was  seen  when 
recruiting  in  Ireland  dropped  from  6,000  in  April-May 
to  3,000  in  May-June.  It  stayed  at  the  lower  figure 
for  several  months,  till  it  was  raised  again  by  efforts  for 
which  Redmond  was  chiefly  responsible.     I  do  not  know 


THE  RAISING  OF  THE  IKISH  BRIGADES     193 

whether  Sir  Edward  Carson's  presence  in  the  Attorney- 
General's  office,  or  his  absence  from  the  Opposition 
benches  in  debates,  was  worth  ten  thousand  men  ;  but 
that  is  a  small  measure  of  what  was  lost  in  Ireland  by 
his  inclusion. 


IV 

The  formation  of  the  Coalition  Government  marks  the 
first  stage  in  the  history  of  Redmond's  defeat  and  the 
victory  of  Sir  Edward  Carson  and  Sinn  Fein. 

Of  what  he  felt  upon  this  matter,  Redmond  at  the 
time  said  not  a  word  in  public.  Six  months  later,  on 
November  2,  1915,  when  a  debate  on  the  naval  and 
military  situation  was  opened,  he  broke  silence — and  his 
first  words  were  an  explanation  of  his  silence.  He  had 
not  intervened,  he  said,  in  any  debate  on  the  war  since 
its  inception.  "  We  thought  a  loyal  and  as  far  as  possible 
silent  support  to  the  Government  of  the  da}'  was  the  best 
service  we  could  render."  This  silence  had  been  main- 
tained "  even  after  the  formation  of  the  Coalition  " — 
when  the  Irish  view  had  been  roughly  set  aside,  and 
when  the  personal  tie  to  the  Liberal  Government  with 
which  he  had  been  so  long  allied  had  been  profoundly 
modified.  He  claimed  the  credit  of  this  loyalty  not 
merely  for  himself  but  for  the  whole  of  his  country. 
"  Since  the  war  commenced  the  voice  of  party  controversy 
has  disappeared  in  Ireland." 

This  was  pushing  generosity  almost  to  a  stretch  of 
imagination,  for  the  voice  of  party  controversy  had  not 
been  absent  from  the  Belfast  Press,  nor  had  it  spared 
him.  But  he  was  speaking  then,  and  he  desired  that 
the  House  should  feel  that  he  spoke,  as  Ireland's  spokes- 
man ;  he  claimed  credit  for  North  and  South  alike  in 
the  absence  of  all  labour  troubles  in  war  supply.  "  The 
spectacle   of    industrial    unrest    in    Great    Britain,    the 

14 


194  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

determined  and  unceasing  attacks  in  certain  sections  of 
the  Press  upon  individual  members  of  the  Government  and 
in  a  special  way  upon  the  Prime  Minister,  have  aroused 
the  greatest  concern  and  the  deepest  indignation  in 
Ireland,"  he  said.  "  Mr.  Asquith  stands  to-day,  as  before 
the  war,  high  in  the  confidence  of  the  Irish  people." 
The  "  persistent  pessimism  "  had  effected  nothing  except 
to  help  in  some  measure  *'  that  little  fringe  which  exists 
in  Ireland  as  in  England,  of  men  who  would  if  they  could 
interfere  with  the  success  of  recruiting." 

No  doubt  there  was  an  clement  of  policy,  of  a  fencer's 
skill,  in  all  this.  Sir  Edward  Carson  had  not  maintained 
silence  and  certainly  had  not  spared  the  Prime  Minister. 
But  in  essence  Redmond  was  relying  on  the  plain  truth. 
He  had  pledged  support  and  he  gave  it  to  the  utmost 
of  his  power,  even  at  his  peril.  Mr,  Birrell  in  the 
posthumous  "  Appreciation "  which  has  been  already 
quoted  has  this  passage  : 

"  Although  it  was  not  always  easy  to  do  business  with 
him,  being  very  justly  suspicious  of  English  politicians, 
ho  could  be  trusted  more  implicitly  than  almost  every 
other  politician  I  have  ever  come  in  contact  with.  Ho 
was  slow  to  pass  his  word,  but  when  he  had  done  so, 
you  knew  he  would  keep  it  to  the  very  letter,  and  what 
was  almost  as  important,  his  silence  and  discretion  could 
be  relied  upon  with  certainty.  He  was  constitutionally 
incapable  of  giving  anybody  away  who  had  trusted  him." 
Nothing  but  considerations  of  loyalty  had  kept  him 
publicly  silent  in  the  months  of  this  year  when  so  much 
was  done,  and  so  much  left  undone,  against  his  desire 
and  his  judgment.  In  June,  the  Sixteenth  Division  was 
within  IjOOO  of  completion.  The  shortage  existed  in  one 
brigade — the  49th — which  had  been  formed  of  battalions 
having  their  recruiting  areas  in  Ulster — two  of  the  Royal 
Irish  Fusiliers,  one  of  the  Inniskillings  and  one  of  the 
Royal  Irish  Rifles.  The  conception  had  undoubtedly 
been  to  provide  for  the  Nationalists  of  Ulster.     But,  as 


THE  RAISING  OF  THE  IRISH  BRIGADES     195 

it  proved,  these  men  vastly  preferred  to  enlist  in  units 
which  were  not  associated  with  the  avowedly  Unionist 
Division,  all  of  whose  battalions  belonged  to  one  or  other 
of  these  three  regiments  ;  and  the  49th  Brigade  was 
not  nearly  up  to  strength.  The  Tenth  Division  was  now  on 
the  point  of  readiness  for  the  field  ;  but  when  the  final 
weeding  out  of  unfit  or  half  trained  men  was  completed 
its  ranks  were  1,200  short.  The  War  Office  decided  to 
draw,  not  on  both  the  other  Irish  Divisions,  but  on  the 
Sixteenth  only,  and  only  upon  the  deficient  brigade. 
When  the  offer  of  immediate  service  was  made,  every  man 
in  its  four  battalions  volunteered,  and  the  Tenth  Division 
was  completed  ;  but  the  Sixteenth  was  thrown  back, 
and  the  discouraging  rumour  that  it  was  to  be  only  used 
as  a  reserve  gained  a  great  impetus.  Redmond  was  very 
angry.  He  wrote  to  Mr.  Tennant  demanding  that  at 
least  the  Division's  deficiency  should  at  once  be  made 
up,  by  giving  to  us  the  full  product  of  one  or  two  weeks' 
recruiting  in  Ireland.  Nothing  of  the  kind  was  done 
to  meet  his  request. 

It  was,  however,  some  compensation  to  think  that 
at  least  one  of  our  purely  Irish  formations  was  going  to 
take  the  field  ;  and  we  hoped  that  its  fortunes  might 
remedy  a  complaint  which  began  to  be  loudly  made — 
that  credit  was  withheld  from  the  achievements  of  Irish 
troops. 

The  main  source  of  this  grievance  was  the  publication 
of  Admiral  de  Robeck's  despatch  concerning  the  first 
landing  at  Gallipoli.  In  the  original  document,  a  schedule 
was  given  showing  the  detail  of  troops  told  off  to  each 
of  the  separate  landings  ;  and  the  narrative,  in  which 
a  sailor  spoke  with  frank  enthusiasm  of  the  desperate 
valour  shown  by  soldiers,  was  written  with  constant 
reference  to  the  detail  given.  As  some  evil  chance  willed, 
the  narrative  mentioned  by  name  several  of  the  regiments 
engaged ;  but  when  it  came  to  describe  the  forlorn  hope 
at  '*  V  "  Beach,  it  dealt  fully  with  the  special  difficulties, 


196  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

and  said  in  brief  but  emphatic  phrase,  "  Here  the  troops 
wrought  miracles."  The  War  Office,  in  editing  the 
despatch  for  publication,  suppressed  the  schedule,  as 
likely  to  give  information  to  the  enemj*,  so  that  in  this 
case  it  did  not  appear  to  whom  the  praise  applied. 

Certain  things  are  unbelievable.  No  officer  and  no 
man  that  ever  lived  could  from  a  partisan  feeling  against 
Ireland  have  sought  to  rob  regiments  who  had  done 
and  suffered  such  things  as  the  Dublins  and  Munsters 
did  and  suffered  at  "  V  "  Beach  of  whatever  credit  could 
be  given  to  them.  Yet  in  such  times  as  we  were  living 
in,  the  unbelievable  is  readily  believed,  and  men  saw 
malice  in  the  suppression  of  what  could  not  long  be 
secret  :  Ireland  had  too  many  dead  that  day.  What 
made  the  suggestion  more  incredible  only  gave  a  poignancy 
to  rei^entment,  for  Admiral  de  Robeck  was  an  Irishman, 
with  his  home  some  few  miles  from  the  regimental  depot 
of  the  Dublins. 

Two  things,  however,  should  be  said.  If  only  in  fair- 
ness to  Admiral  de  Robeck,  the  explanation  should 
instantly  have  been  given  :  it  was  never  given  in  full 
until  he  came  before  the  Dardanelles  Commission,  many 
months  later,  and  it  has  not  been  officially  published  to 
this  hour.  And  further,  whoever  edited  the  despatch 
was  presumably  a  soldier,  and  knew  how  jealous  soldiers 
are,  and  how  jealous  their  friends  are  for  them,  of  every 
word  that  goes  to  the  recognition  of  such  service.  The 
effect  of  omitting  the  schedule  ought  to  have  been  fore- 
seen. 

Even  before  the  middle  of  August,  when  angry  letters 
over  this  despatch  were  appearing  in  the  Irish  Press, 
other  news  began  to  come  to  Ireland,  ill  calculated 
to  help  recruiting.  The  Tenth  Division  had  come  into 
action,  but  under  the  unluckiest  conditions.  When  the 
great  attempt  was  made  to  cut  across  the  peninsula  by 
a  renewed  push  from  Anzac  and  by  a  new  landing  at 
Suvla   Bay,    the   Irish    were   among    the   reinforcements 


THE  RAISING  OF  THE  IRISH  BRIGADES     197 

told  off  for  that  surprise.  But  from  lack  of  room  on  the 
island  bases  it  was  considered  impossible  to  keep  them 
together  as  a  division,  and  one  brigade,  the  29th,  lay 
so  far  off  that  it  could  not  be  brought  into  the  con- 
certed movement  on  Suvla.  It  was  therefore  sent 
separately  to  Anzac.  and  joined  in  with  the  Australians. 
Broken  up  by  regiments  and  not  operating  as  a  unit, 
it  furnished  useful  support ;  but  no  credit  for  what  the 
men  did  could  go  to  Ireland.  The  other  two  brigades, 
the  30th  and  31st,  were  left  under  the  command  of 
their  divisional  general  and  were  to  attack  on  the  left 
of  the  bay.  But  owing  to  some  defect  in  exploration 
of  the  coast-line,  the  movement  was  not  so  carried  out ; 
six  battalions  out  of  the  eight  were  landed  on  the  south 
of  the  bay  and  were  attached  to  the  right-hand  force. 
Thus,  in  the  actual  operations  Sir  Bryan  Mahon  had 
under  his  command  only  two  battalions  of  his  own  men. 
The  remaining  six  operated  under  the  command  of  the 
divisional  general  of  the  Eleventh  Division,  who  delegated 
the  conduct  of  the  actual  attack  to  one  of  his  brigadiers. 
It  is  sufficient  to  say  that  immediately  after  the  action 
both  these  officers  were  relieved  of  their  commands. 
The  same  fate  befell  the  corps  commander  under  whose 
directions  this  wing  of  the  concerted  movement  was 
placed. 

In  face  of  these  facts  it  would  be  absurd  to  deny  that 
the  troops  were  badly  handled.  They  suffered  terribly 
from  thirst,  and  the  suffering  was  in  large  measure  pre- 
ventible.  The  attack  was  a  failure.  All  the  success 
achieved  was  the  capture  of  Chocolate  Hill,  and  the 
Irish  claim  that  success.  It  is  disputed  b}-  other  regi- 
ments. This  much  is  certain  :  the  Irisli  were  part  of 
the  troops  who  carried  the  hill,  and  at  nightfall,  when 
the  rest  were  withdrawn  to  the  beach,  the  Irish  were 
left  holding  it. 

But  they  had  paid  dearly,  and  in  the  days  which 
followed  many  more  were  sacrificed  in  the  hopeless  effort 


198  JOHN   REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

to  retrieve  what  had  been  lost  when  the  surprise  attack 
failed.  The  loss  fell  specially  on  a  picked  battalion, 
the  7th  Diiblins,  which  had  grown  up  about  a  footballers' 
company,  the  ver}^  flower  of  j'oung  Irish  manhood.  Grief 
and  indignation  were  universal  when  tales  of  what  had 
happened  began  to  come  through. 

But  of  all  this  Redmond  said  no  word  in  public.  He 
threatened  disclosure  in  debate  at  one  period  ;  yet  on 
a  strong  representation  from  Mr.  Tennant — in  whose 
friendliness,  as  in  the  Prime  Minister's,  he  had  confidence 
— he  refrained.  To  this  abstention  he  added  the  most 
practical  proof  of  good  will.  Lord  Wimborne,  now  Lord- 
Lieutenant,  seriously  concerned  at  the  continued  drop 
in  recruiting,  which  had  not  shown  any  v'^ign  of  recovery 
since  the  Coalition  Government  was  formed,  came  to 
him  with  the  proposal  for  a  conference  on  the  subject. 
In  pursuance  of  this  suggestion  Redmond  went  to 
London,  where  an  interview  took  place  between  him  and 
Lord  Kitchener,  Mr.  Birrell  and  Mr.  Tennant  assisting. 
Redmond  put  in  a  memorandum  stating  his  complaints, 
and  thrashed  out  the  subject  to  satisfactory  conclu- 
sions on  all  points  that  directly  affected  recruiting. 
The  conference  ultimate!}^  met  at  the  Viceregal  Lodge 
on  October  15th.  It  included  the  Primate  of  All  Ireland, 
Lord  Londonderry,  Lord  Meatli,  I^ord  P(>wer.scourt,  Sir 
Nugent  Everard,  the  O'Conor  Don  and  Colonel  Sharman 
Crawford,  the  Lord  Mayors  of  Dublin,  Belfast  and  Cork, 
and  Redmond.  The  military  were  represented  by  Major- 
General  Friend,  commanding  the  troops  in  Ireland,  with 
whom  Redmond  always  had  the  most  cordial  relations. 

Only  those  who  understand  something  of  Irish  tradition 
will  realize  how  great  a  departure  from  established  usage 
it  was  for  ParnelFs  lieutenant  and  successor  to  take  part 
formally  in  a  meeting  at  the  Viceregal  Lodge — or  indeed 
to  cross  its  threshold  for  any  purpose.  But  Redmond 
always  had  the  logic  of  his  convictions.  As  part  of  a 
compact,  he  was  helping  to  the  best  of  his  power  the 


THE  RAISING  OF  THE  IRISH  BRIGADES     199 

Government  which  must  carry  on  till  Home  Rule  could 
come  into  operation  ;  and  here  as  elsewhere  he  waa  ready 
to  mark  his  conviction  that  the  enactment  of  Home  Rule 
had  made  possible  a  complete  change  in  his  attitude. 

Among  his  papers  is  a  very  full  note  of  what  passed 
on  this  occasion.  It  is  confidential,  but  one  may  note 
the  extreme  friendliness  of  attitude  as  between  Redmond 
and  the  Ulster  representatives,  and  also  the  fact  that 
the  operative  suggestions  agreed  on  were  proposed  first 
by  Redmond  himself.  They  were  the  result  of  his  inter- 
view with  Lord  Kitchener.  Recruiting  in  Ireland  should 
no  longer  be  left  to  voluntary  effort,  but  a  Department 
should  be  formed  corresponding  to  that  over  which  Lord 
Derby  had  been  appointed  to  preside  in  Great  Britain  ; 
and  the  Lord-Lieutenant  himself  should  accept  the  posi- 
tion of  its  official  head,  and  should  appoint  or  nominate 
some  man  of  known  business  capacity  to  preside  over 
the  detail  of  organization.  Redmond  pressed  also  that 
the  country  should  be  told  definitely  what  Lord  Wim- 
borne  had  told  the  conference,  that  the  need  was  for  a 
total  of  about  1,100  recruits  per  week. 

He  insisted  also  very  strongly  on  the  publication  of 
a  letter  which  Lord  Kitchener  at  his  instance  had  written 
to  the  conference.     Its  last  paragraph  read  : 

"  The  Irisli  are  entitled  to  their  full  share  of  the  com- 
pliments paid  to  the  rest  of  the  United  Kingdom  for 
their  hitherto  magnificent  response  to  the  appeal  for 
men  ;  but  if  that  response  is  to  reap  its  due  and  onlj^ 
reward  in  victory,  the  supply  must  be  continued." 

Over  81,000  recruits  had  been  raised  in  Ireland  since 
the  war  started — a  period  of  eighty-two  weeks.  Viewed 
in  comparison  with  Lord  Kitchener's  original  anticipa- 
tions, the  result  might  well  be  called  "  magnificent." 
But  it  was  necessary  to  maintain  the  same  weekly 
average,  and  for  four  months  the  figure  had  been  much 
below  this.  The  result  of  the  new  campaign  was  to 
raise  nearly  7,500  men  in  seven  weeks. 


200  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

In  the  campaign  thus  launched,  as  Redmond  so 
keenly  desired,  under  the  joint  auspices  of  Ulstermen, 
Southern  Unionists  and  Nationalists,  one  circumstance 
attracted  attention.  It  was  proposed  to  hold  a  great 
meeting  at  Newry,  the  frontier  town  where  Ulster 
marches  with  the  South — a  centre  in  which  recruiting 
had  been  singularly  keen  and  successful.  The  scheme 
was  to  unite  on  one  platform  the  Lord-Lieutenant, 
Redmond  and  Sir  Edward  Carson.  Sir  Edward  Carson, 
however,  "  did  not  think  the  proposal  would  serve 
any  useful  purpose,"  and  the  meeting  was  held  without 
him,  in  December   1915. 

By  this  time  the  Sixteenth  Division  was  under  orders 
for  France.  We  had  been  since  September  in  training 
at  Blackdown,  near  Aldershot ;  and  here  Redmond  was 
one  of  several  distinguished  visitors  who  came  to  eee 
us  and  address  the  troops.  He  came  down  also  un- 
officially more  than  once,  for  his  brother  had  a  pleasant 
house  among  the  pine-trees — where  he  guarded,  or  was 
guarded  by,  the  brigade's  mascot,  the  largest  of  three 
enormous  wolfhounds  which,  through  John  Redmond, 
were  presented  to  the  Irish  Division. 

Towards  the  end  of  the  year  new  rumours  were  afloat. 
The  49th  Brigade  had  never  been  made  up  to  strength, 
and  there  were  stories  that  a  non-Irish  brigade  was  to 
b©  linked  up  with  us.  Letters  from  two  commanding 
officers  of  the  49th  Brigade  illustrate  the  extent  to  which 
Redmond  had  come  by  all  ranks  to  be  regarded  as  our 
tutelary  genius  ;  to  him  they  appealed  for  redress,  fearing 
that  they  would  be  turned  into  a  reserve  brigade.  The 
matter  was  settled  at  last  to  his  content  and  theirs  by  a 
decision  that  the  two  brigades  which  were  ready  should 
go  out  in  advance,  to  be  followed  by  the  49th  ;  and  we 
entrained  accordingly  on  December  17th. 

Sir  Lawrence  Parsons  wrote  to  Mr.  Birrell  :  "As  the 
last  train-load  moved  out  of  Farnborough  station  the 
senior  Railway  Staff  Officer   came  up  to  me  and  said, 


THE  RAISING  OF  THE  IRISH  BRIGADES     201 

*  Well,  General,  that  i3  the  soberest,  quietest,  most 
amenable  and  best  disciplined  Division  that  has  left 
Aldershot,  and  I  have  seen  them  all  go.'  "  The  compli- 
ment was  well  paid  to  General  Parsons,  and  it  may 
have  been  some  consolation  for  a  sore  heart :  that  keen 
spirit  had  to  be  content  to  be  left  behind.  Major-General 
W.  B.  Hickio,  C.B.,  who  had  greatly  distinguished  him- 
self in  France,  now  took  over  command.  It  would  be 
disingenuous  to  say  that  John  Redmond  was  not  content 
with  this  change  ;  but  his  brother  was  deeply  impressed 
by  the  hardship  inflicted  on  a  gallant  soldier. 

The  Ulster  Division  had  preceded  us  by  three  months. 
All  three  Irish  Divisions  were  now  in  the  field,  and  reserve 
brigades  were  established  to  feed  them.  Redmond  could 
feel  that  in  great  measure  his  work  was  done,  and  that 
he  could  await  the  issue  in  confidence. 

He  wrote  at  this  time,  in  a  preface  contributed  to 
Mr.  MacDonagh's  book  The  Irish  at  the  Front,  a  passage 
of  unusual  emotion  which  tells  what  he  thought  and 
felt  upon  this  matter. 

"It  is  these  soldiers  of  ours,  with  their  astonishing 
courage  and  tJieir  beautiful  faith,  with  their  natural 
military  genius,  carrying  with  them  their  green  flags 
and  their  Irish  war-pipes,  advancing  to  the  charge,  their 
fearless  officers  at  their  head,  and  followed  by  their 
beloved  chaplains  as  great-hearted  as  themselves — bring- 
ing with  them  a  quality  all  their  own  to  the  sordid  modern 
battlefield — it  is  these  soldiers  of  ours  to  whose  keeping 
the  Cause  of  Ireland  has  passed.  It  was  never  in  holier, 
worthier  keeping  than  with  these  boys  offering  up  their 
supreme  sacrifice  of  life  with  a  smile  on  their  lips  because 
it  was  given  for  Ireland." 

He  wrote  this  when  fresh  from  a  sight  of  troops  in  the 
field.  This  visit  took  place  in  November  1915,  and  lie 
was  full  of  the  experience  when  he  came  down  to  say 
good-bye  before  we  went  out.  Nothing  in  all  his  life  had 
approached  it  in  interest,  he  said  to  me.    The  diary  of 


202  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

his  tour  is  prefixed  to  Mr.  S.  P.  Ker*a  book,  What  the 
Irish  Regiments  Have  Done — but  it  conveys  little,  except 
this  dominant  impression  :  "  From  the  Irish  Commander- 
in-Chief  himself  right  down  through  the  Army  one  meets 
Irishmen  wherever  one  goes."  On  that  journey  he  got 
the  same  welcome  from  Ulstermen  as  from  his  own 
nearest  countrymen  in  the  Royal  Irish  Regiment. 


One  thing  at  least  Redmond  gained,  I  think,  from  liis 
visit  to  the  front — the  sense  that  with  the  British  Army 
in  the  field  he  was  in  a  friendly  country.  He  never  had 
that  sense  with  regard  to  the  War  Office.  Running  all 
through  this  critical  year  1915  is  the  history  of  one  long 
failure — his  attempt  to  secure  the  creation  of  a  Home 
Defence  force  in  Ireland.  Given  that,  he  would  be  confi- 
dent of  possessing  the  foundation  for  the  structure  of 
an  Irish  Arnij^ — an  army  which  would  be  regarded  as 
Ireland's  own.  Without  it,  the  whole  fabric  of  his  efforts 
must  be  insecure.  He  desired  to  build,  as  in  England 
they  built,  upon  the  voluntary  effort  of  a  people  in  whom 
entire  confidence  was  placed.  In  the  War  Office  un- 
doubtedly men's  minds  were  set  upon  finding  a  regular 
supply  of  Irish  troops  by  quite  other  methods — by  the 
application  of  compulsion. 

Redmond  saw  to  the  full  the  danger  of  attemj^ting 
compulsion  with  an  unwilling  people ;  it  was  a  peril 
which  he  sought  to  keep  off,  and  while  he  lived  did  keep 
off,  by  securing  a  steady  flow  of  recruits,  by  gaining  a 
reasonable  definition  of  Ireland's  quota,  and  by  exerting 
that  personal  authority  which  the  recognition  of  his 
efforts  conferred  upon  him.  I  do  not  think  he  was  with- 
out hope  of  a  moment  when  Ireland  might  come,  as 
Great   Britain    had   come   by  the   end   of  this  year,  to 


THE  RAISING  OF  THE  IRISH  BRIGADES     203 

recognize  that  the  voluntary  system  levied  an  unfair  toll 
on  the  willing,  and  that  the  community  itself  should  accept 
the  general  necessity  of  binding  its  own  members.  But 
before  this  could  be  even  dreamed  of  as  practicable, 
the  whole  force  of  Volunteers,  North  and  South,  must 
feel  that  they  were  trusted  and  recognized,  a  part  in 
the  general  work. 

The  practical  organization  of  the  great  body  at  his 
disposal  was  under  discussion  between  him  and  Colonel 
Moore  from  February  1915  onwards  ;  and  the  idea  was 
mooted  tfc^at  by  introducing  the  territorial  system  Ulster 
Volunteers  and  National  Volunteers  might  be  drawn 
into  the  same  corps.  This,  however,  was  for  the  future  ; 
the  immediate  need  was  to  extend  the  arming  and  training 
under  their  own  organization.  Redmond  learnt  at  once 
that  Lord  Kitchener  was  against  this  ;  that  he  pointed 
to  the  existence  of  another  armed  force  in  the  North  of 
Ireland  and  argued  that  to  create  a  second  must  mean 
civil  war  ;  that  he  believed  revolutionary  forces  to  exist 
in  Ireland  which  Redmond  could  not  control  and  perhaps 
did  not  even  suspect.  Those  who  then  thought  with 
Lord  Kitchener  can  say  now  that  events  have  justified 
his  view.  They  omit  to  consider  how  far  those  events 
proceeded  from  Lord  Kitchener's  refusal  to  accept 
Redmond's  judgment. 

Of  the  danger  Redmond  was  fully  aware.  "  I  under- 
stand 5'our  position  to  be,"  Mr.  T.  P.  O'Connor  wrote  to 
him  in  January  1915,  "  that  unless  your  plan  as  to  the 
Irish  Volunteers  is  adopted  we  are  face  to  face  with  a 
most  critical  and  dangerous  situation  in  Ireland."  Just 
as  fully  was  he  convinced  of  the  way  to  meet  it.  In 
February,  replying  indignantly  to  Sir  Reginald  Brade, 
who  had  complained  that  Irish  recruiting  was  "  distinctly 
languid,"  he  enumerated  the  points  at  which  the  War 
Office  had  failed  to  act  on  his  own  advice,  and  urged  once 
more,  in  the  first  instance,  his  original  policy  of  employing 
both  Ulster  and  Nationalist  Volunteers  for  Home  Defence. 


204  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

"  If  the  two  bodies  of  volunteers  were  trusted  with  the 
defence  of  the  country  under  proper  military  drill  and 
discipline,  the  result  would  unquestionably  be  that  a 
large  number  of  them  would  volunteer  for  the  front. 
Recruiting  can  best  be  promoted  by  creating  an  atmo- 
sphere in  which  the  patriotism  of  the  younger  men  of 
the  country  can  be  evoked,  and  we  have  done  a  good 
deal  already  in  this  direction." 

On  April  4th  a  display  was  made  of  the  force  available. 
A  review  was  held  in  the  Phoenix  Park  of  25,000  men — 
splendid  material,  but  half  of  them  with  neither  arms 
nor  uniform.  The  Unionist  Press  was  friendly  in  its 
comments  upon  the  statement  which  Redmond  supplied 
after  the  parade,  claiming  that  these  men  should  be 
utilized  for  Home  Defence.  That  day  was  Easter  Sunday 
of  1915.  No  one  guessed  then  what  the  next  Easter 
was  going  to  bring  about. 

On  April  19th  I  find  him  writing  officially  to  Mr.  Birrell, 
seeking  the  Chief  Secretary's  influence  with  the  War 
Office,  and  claiming,  what  was  the  truth,  that  the  Irish 
Command  shared  his  view.  But  at  the  moment  recruit- 
ing was  increasing  weekly  and  the  War  Office  were  in 
no  mood  to  make  further  concessions  than  those  by 
which  the  improvement  had  been  brought  about.  Then 
came  the  Coalition,  and  the  consequent  reduction  of 
recruiting  from  close  on  7,000  to  3,000  a  month  ;  and  in 
July  the  Adjutant-General,  Sir  Henry  Sclater,  of  his 
own  motion  approached  Redmond.  He  suggested  a 
meeting  between  Redmond  and  the  War  Office,  with 
Sir  Matthew  Nathan  and  General  Parsons  in  attendance. 
Redmond  agreed  to  the  proposal,  but  formulated  his 
views  in  a  lengthy  memorandum.  The  first  three  points 
dealt  with  matters  directly  concerning  the  Sixteenth 
Division,  but  in  the  fourth,  weighty  emphasis  was  laid 
on  the  suggestion  of  recruiting  Volunteers  for  Home 
Defence.  Sir  Henry  Sclater's  reply  omitted  completely 
all  reference  to  this  last — an  omission  on  which  Redmond 


THE  RAISING  OF  THE  IRISH  BRIGADES     205 

commented  sharply.  He  elicited  the  official  answer  that 
by  urging  men  to  join  on  a  special  enlistment  for  home 
service  the  numbers  who  would  join  for  general  service 
would  be  reduced.  This  was  diametrically  opposite  to 
Redmond's  view,  and  he  said  so,  and  urged  again  that 
the  Irish  Command  was  of  his  opinion. 

The  proposed  conference  resolved  itself — to  Redmond's 
indignation — into  a  discussion  of  Redmond's  memorandum 
between  the  Adjutant-General  and  Sir  Lawrence  Parsons. 
Only  in  September,  when  at  Lord  Wimborne's  instance 
he  interviewed  Lord  Kitchener,  did  he  have  the  oppor- 
tunity of  raising  the  matter  by  direct  speech.  Lord 
Kitchener  then  declared  himself  willing  to  admit  that 
on  the  question  whether  enlistment  for  Home  Defence 
would  promote  or  retard  recruiting,  Redmond's  judgment 
was  probably  more  valuable  than  his  own,  and  he 
promised  to  review  the  question  of  Home  Defence  again 
in  the  light  of  it.     But  of  this  promise  nothing  came. 

Meantime  Redmond  was  being  warned  that  the  Volunteer 
organization  as  it  stood  had  exhausted  its  usefulness  ; 
its  enthusiasm  was  gone — a  natural  result  of  having  no 
purpose.  A  new  opening  seemed  to  be  created  by  the 
Bill  which  Lord  Lincolnshire  introduced  to  recognize 
a  Volunteer  Force  in  Great  Britain  which  should  perform 
military  duties  under  the  War  Office  control.  Redmond 
hoped  to  see  this  carried  with  an  extension  of  it  to  Ireland, 
and  this  was  the  practical  proposal  with  which  he  con- 
cluded his  speech  when,  on  November  2nd,  for  the  first 
time  in  that  year,  he  raised  in  debate  the  questions 
to  which  so  much  of  his  time  and  thought  had  been 
given. 

How  was  the  Irish  recruiting  problem  to  be  dealt  with  ? 
He  declared  himself  absolutely  against  compulsion,  to 
impose  which  would  be  "  a  folly  and  a  crime  "  unless  the 
country  was  "  practically  unanimous  in  favour  of  it." 
The  voluntary  system  had  never  had  fair  play — at  all 
events  in  Ireland. 


206  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

**  It  is  a  fact,  which  has  its  origin  in  history,  and  which 
I  need  not  refer  to  more  closely — it  is  a  fact  that  in  the 
past  recruiting  for  the  British  Army  was  not  popular 
with  the  ma.^s  of  the  Irish  people.  But  when  the  war 
broke  out,  my  colleagues  and  I,  quite  regardless,  let 
me  say,  of  the  political  risks  which  sta.red  us  in  the  face, 
instantly  made  an  appeal  to  those  whom  we  represented 
in  Ireland,  and  told  them  that  this  was  Ireland's  war 
as  well  as  England's  war,  that  it  was  a  just  war,  and 
that  the  recent  attitude  of  Great  Britain  to  Ireland  had 
thrown  upon  us  a  great,  grave  duty  of  honour  to  the 
British  Empire.  We  then  wont  back  from  this  country, 
and  we  went  all  through  Ireland.  I  myself,  within  the 
space  of  about  a  montli  after  that,  made  speeches  at 
great  public  meetings  in  every  one  of  the  four  provinces 
of  Ireland.  We  set  ourselves  to  the  task  of  creating  in 
Ireland — creating,  mind  j'ou — an  atmosphere  favourable 
to  recruiting,  and  of  creating  a  sentiment  in  Ireland 
favourable  to  recruiting.  I  say  most  solemnly,  that  in 
that  task  we  were  absolutely  entitled  to  the  sympathy 
and  the  assistance  of  the  Government  and  the  War  Office. 
I  am  sorry  to  say  we  got  neither." 

He  disclaimed  all  imputation  upon  the  Prime  Minister 
or  the  Under-Secretary,  Mr.  Tennant — exceptions  which 
pointed  the  reference  to  Lord  Kitchener. 

''  The  fact  remains  that  when  we  were  faced  with 
that  difficult  and  formidable  task,  practically  every 
suggestion  that  wo  made,  based  on  the  strength  of  our 
own  knowledge  of  Avhat  was  suitable  for  Ireland  and 
the  conditions  there,  was  put  upon  one  side.  The  gentle- 
men who  were  responsible  for  that  evidently  believed 
that  they  knew  what  was  suited  to  the  necessities  of 
Ireland  far  better  than  we  did.  A  score  of  times,  at 
least,  I  put  upon  paper  and  sent  to  the  Government  and 
the  War  Office  my  suggestions  and  my  remonstrances, 
but  all  in  vain.  Often,  almost  in  despair,  I  was  tempted 
to  rise  in  this  House  and  publicly  tell  the  House  of 
Commons  the  way  in  which  we  were  hampered  and 
thwarted  in  our  work  in  Ireland.  I  refrained  from  doing 
so  from  fear  of  doing  mischief  and  from  fear  of  doing 
harm.    To-day  I  am  very  glad  that  I  so  refrained,  because 


THE  RAISING  OF  THE  IRISH  BRIGADES     207 

in  spite  of  these  discouragomcnts,  in  spite  of  this  thwart- 
ing and  embarrassing,  and  in  spite  of  the  utterly  faulty 
and  ridiculous  system  of  recruiting  that  was  set  on  foot, 
we  have  succeeded,  and  have  raised  in  Ireland  a  body 
of  men  whose  numbers  Lord  Kitchener,  in  his  lettc-r  to 
the   Irish  conference,   declared   were   magnificent." 

He  quoted  the  Unionist  Birmingham  Post  for  the 
saying  that  what  had  happened  in  Ireland  was  "  a 
miracle."  From  the  National  Volunteers  27,054  men 
had  joined  the  colours ;  from  the  Ulster  Volunteers 
27,412.  In  both  forces  there  must  be  manj^  left  \^ho 
could  not  leave  Ireland,  yet  might  be  utilized  in  Ireland. 

"  It  ma}'  bo  remembered  that  the  very  day  the  war 
broke  out  I  rose  in  my  place  in  this  House  and  offered 
the  Volunteers  to  the  Government  for  Home  Defence. 
1  only  spoke,  of  course,  of  the  National  Volunteers.  I 
was  not  entitled  to  speak  for  the  Ulster  Volunteers,  but 
I  suggested  tiiat  they  and  we  might  work  sliouldcr  to 
shoulder.  From  that  da}'^  to  this  the  War  Office  have 
persistently  refused  to  have  anj'thing  to  say  to  these 
Volunteers.  The  Prime  Minister,  a  few  da\s  after  I 
spoke,  in  answer  to  a  question  told  me  that  the  Govern- 
ment were  considering  at  that  moment  how  best  to 
utilize  these  Volunteers.  They  have  never  been  utilized 
since.  A  few  daj'^s  after  I  made  my  speech  I  went  myself 
to  the  War  Office,  and  as  a  result  of  my  interviews  there 
I  submitted  to  the  Government  a  scheme  which  would 
have  provided  them  at  once  with  25,000  men.  If  that 
offer  had  been  accepted,  rot  25,000,  not  50,000,  but  100,000 
men  would  have  been  enlisted  for  Home  Defence  within 
the  month.  But  no,  it  was  obstinately  refused.  I  hear 
that  an  lion,  member  below  me  is  now  apparently  in- 
clined to  take  the  point  that  the  W^ar  Office  took.  The 
War  Office  said  that  would  interfere  with  recruiting  in 
Ireland.  Of  course,  we  know  Ireland  better  than  the 
hon.  member.  We  know  our  difficulties  in  Ireland,  We 
do  not  believe  that  it  would.  On  the  contrary,  we  believe 
that  it  would  have  promoted  recruiting.  Wc  believe 
that  the  enlistment  of  these  men,  their  association  in 
barracks  and  in  camp,  with  the  inevitable  creation  and 
fostering  of  a  military  spirit,  would  have  led  to  a  large 


208  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

number  of  volunteers  for  foreign  service.  Our  views 
counted  for  nought.  In  this  instance  they  were  not 
only  our  views.  These  views  had  the  approval  of  the 
Irish  Command,  and  from  the  purely  military  point  of 
view  the  Irish  Command  was  in  favour  of  some  such 
scheme  as  I  had  outlined,  and  the  reason  was  plain. 
They  have  to  provide,  and  are  providing  to  this  day, 
20,000  to  25,000  men  from  the  Regular  Army  for  the 
defence  of  the  coasts  of  Ireland — guarding  the  coast, 
guarding  piers,  railways,  bridges,  and  so  forth.  If  these 
men  of  ours  had  been  taken  up,  within  two  or  three  months 
of  training  and  in  camp  they  would  have  been  able  to 
do  this  work,  and  would  have  done  it  ever  since,  and 
would  thereby  have  released  from  20,000  to  25,000  men. 
That  is  the  chief  reason,  I  fancy,  why  the  Military  Com- 
mand in  Ireland  were  in  favour  of  this  idea.  But  to 
this  moment  the  refusal  continues.  I  see  that  an  un- 
official Bill  was  introduced  by  the  Marquess  of  Lincoln- 
fthire  into  the  House  of  Lords  doing,  to  a  great  measure, 
for  England  and  Wales  what  we  have  been  asking  should 
be  done  for  Ireland.  I  claim  that  that  Bill  shall  be 
extended  to  Ireland." 

The  Volunteer  Bill  came  to  the  House  of  Commons 
in  a  form  making  it  applicable  to  Ireland.  There  it 
was  opposed  by  Sir  Edward  Carson,  who  demanded 
that  no  man  of  military  age  should  be  accepted  as  a 
volunteer  unless  he  consented  to  enlist  for  general  service 
if  called.     This  killed  the  Bill. 

Sir  Edward  Carson  was  of  opinion  that  the  necessities 
oi  the  case  demanded  universal  compulsory  service ; 
and  conscription  was  already  in  sight.  With  that  prospect 
Redmond's  anxiety  became  very  grave. 

On  November   15th  he  wrote  his  mind  to  the  Prime 

Minister  : 

House  ok  Commons, 

_    .  November  15,  1915. 

Private. 

My  Dear  Mr.  Asquith, 

I  have  been  in  a  state  of  great  anxiety  for  some 
time  on  the  question  of  a  possible  Conscription  Bill,  and 
I  have  discussed  the  matter  fully  \\ith  Mr.  Birrell,  who 


THE  RAISING   OF  THE  IRISH  BRIGADES     209 

know3  my  viewa,  and  who,  no  doubt,  has  communicatod 
them  to  you. 

I  think  it  well,  however,  to  shortly  put,  in  writing, 
our  position. 

In  your  Dublin  speech  you  asked  the  Irish  people  for 
"  a  free  offering  from  a  free  people,"  and  the  response 
has  been,  taking  everything  into  account,  in  the  words 
of  Lord  Kitchener,   "  magnificent/' 

Recruiting  is  now  going  on  at  a  greater  rate  than 
ever  in  Ireland,  and  it  would  be  a  terrible  misfortune 
if  we  were  driven  into  a  position  on  the  question  of  con- 
scription which  would  alienate  that  public  opinion  which 
we  have  now  got  upon  our  side  in  Ireland. 

The  position  would,  indeed,  be  a  cruel  one,  if  con- 
scription were  enacted  for  England,  and  Ireland  excluded. 

On  the  other  hand,  I  must  tell  you  that  the  enforce- 
ment of  conscription  in  Ireland  is  an  impossibility. 

Faced  with  this  dilemma,  if  a  Conscription  Bill  be 
introduced,  the  Irish  party  will  be  forced  to  oppose  it  as 
vigorously  as  possible  at  every  stage. 

I  regret  having  to  write  you  in  this  way,  but  it  is 
only  right  that  I  should  be  quite  frank  in  the  matter. 

Very  truly  yours, 

J.  E.  Redmond. 

Rt.  Hon.  H.  H.  Asquith,  M.P., 
Prime  Minister. 

Assurances  reached  him  that  the  first  tentative  Bill 
for  compelling  unmarried  men  to  enlist  would  only  be 
introduced  to  fulfil  a  pledge  given  by  Mr.  Asquith  in 
connection  with  the  Derby  Scheme,  and  that  as  the 
Derby  Scheme  had  not  applied  to  Ireland,  the  pledge 
also  had  no  bearing  there.  By  December  21st  the  matter 
was  raised  in  the  House  of  Commons.  Redmond,  after 
the  Prime  Minister  had  spoken,  defined  what  he  was 
careful  to  call  "  my  personal  view  "  on  the  question  of 
compulsory  service. 

**  I  am  content  to  take  the  phrase  used  by  the  Prime 
Minister.  I  am  prepared  to  say  that  I  will  stick  at 
nothing — nothing  which  is  necessary,  nothing  which  is 
calculated  to  effect  the  purpose — in  order  to  end  this 

16 


210  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

war."  He  added  :  "  That  is  the  view,  I  am  certain,  of 
the  people  of  Ireland." 

The  whole  question  was  presented  by  him  as  "  one 
of  expediency  and  necessity,  not  of  principle."  From 
that  standpoint  he  declared  himself  unconvinced  that 
the  adoption  of  compulsion  in  any  shape  was  either 
expedient  or  necessary.  It  was  inexpedient  because  it 
would  "  break  up  the  unity  of  the  country  " — unnecessary 
because  they  had  already  many  more  men  than  they 
could  either  train  or  equip.  In  Ireland,  a  limited  task 
had  been  defined,  to  keep  up  the  necessary  reserves  for 
fifty-three  battalions  of  infantry,  and  he  pointed  to  the 
fact  that  so  far  the  new  organization  of  recruiting  was 
producing  the  stipulated  flow. 

On  these  grounds,  he  said,  the  Irish  party  would  oppose 
the  measure,  and  on  January  5th  that  opposition  was 
offered,  though  Ireland  was  excluded  from  the  Bill.  But 
the  first  division  showed  a  majority  of  more  than  ten 
to  one  for  the  proposal ;  and  in  face  of  that,  when  the 
House  returned  to  the  discussion,  Redmond  declared  that 
Irish  opposition  must  cease — especially  in  view  of  the 
support  given  by  the  responsible  leaders  of  Labour. 
Sir  Edward  Carson,  following,  pressed  him  to  go  one 
step  farther  and  accept  the  inclusion  of  Ireland  in  the 
Bill.  Nothing,  he  said,  could  do  so  much  to  conciliate 
Ulster.  This  was  the  first  time  that  any  suggestion  of 
this  possibility  had  come  from  that  quarter,  and  it  came 
in  backing  a  suggestion  which  Redmond  could  not  accept. 
I  was  not  present  at  the  debate,  and  it  is  hard  to  judge 
of  such  matters  from  the  printed  record,  but  the  im- 
pression on  my  mind  is  that  the  suggestion  was  made 
without  any  desire  to  embarrass.  A  few  days  later,  in 
the  Committee  stage,  an  Ulster  member  moved  an 
amendment  which  would  have  included  Ireland.  Mr. 
Bonar  Law,  speaking  for  the  Government,  advised  against 
it — on  the  ground  of  expediency  ;  it  would  not  be  an 
easy  thing  to  put  this  measure  into  operation  in  Ireland. 


THE   RAISING   OF  THE   IRISH   BRIGADES     211 

Sir  Edward  Carson  spoke  later  and  counselled  the  dropping 
of  the  amendment.  With  matters  in  this  stage  Redmond 
spoke  very  fully  to  the  House,  recognizing  the  absence 
of  all  partisan  tone  in  the  speeches  of  Ulster  members. 
He  had  long  felt,  he  said,  that  ''  if  conscription  came, 
Ireland's  whole  attitude  towards  the  ^^'ar  was  likely  to 
suffer  cruel  and  unjust  misrepresentation,"  because  it 
must  emphasize  a  difference  between  the  two  countries. 
Conscription  in  Ireland  would  be  "  imi^racticable,  un- 
workable and  impossible."  Instead  of  leading  to  the 
increase  in  the  supply  of  men  it  would  have  the  oj^posite 
effect. 

"  It  would  most  undoubtedly  paralyse  the  efforts  of 
myself  and  others  who  have  worked  unsparingly — and 
not  unsuccessfully — since  the  commencement  of  the  war, 
and  would  play  right  into  the  hands  of  those  who  are 
a  contemptible  minority  among  the  Nationalists  of 
Ireland,  and  who  .are  trying — unsuccessfully  trying — to 
prevent  recruiting  and  to  undermine  thus  the  position 
and  power  of  the  Irish  party  because  of  the  attitude  we 
have  taken  up." 

Ho  complained  once  more  of  the  Government's  failure 
to  utilize  the  Volunteers  and  of  the  damping  effect  which 
had  resulted  from  the  non-fulfilment  of  Mr.  Asquith's 
words.  Yet  Ireland  was  doing  all  that  was  asked  of 
it — maintaining  the  reserves  of  Irishmen  for  Irish  regi- 
ments at  the  front. — This  was  true  at  the  moment ;  but 
the  Sixteenth  Division  had  scarcely  yet  begun  to  come 
into  the  line  and  the  Ulster  Division,  during  its  first  few 
months,  suffered  slight  casualties.  In  point  of  fact,  how- 
ever, the  bare  rumour  of  conscription  had  checked 
recruiting,  and  Redmond  was  guarded  in  his  terms.  It 
was,  he  said,  "  on  the  whole  very  satisfactory,  and  in  the 
towns  amazing  "  ;  but  he  admitted  that  the  country 
districts  had  not  given  an  adequate  response. 

But  he  made  now  an  appeal  to  the  House  as  a 
whole  to  lift  the  consideration  of  this  whole  matter  on 


212  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

to  broad  lines,  to  view  it  on  the  plane  of  statesmanship. 
If  five  years  earlier  anyone  had  foretold  that  in  a 
great  war  Ireland  would  send  95,000  volunteer  new 
recruits  to  fight  by  the  side  of  England,  would  he  not 
have  been  regarded  as  a  lunatic  ?  "  The  change  in 
Ireland  has  been  so  rapid  that  men  are  apt  to  forget  its 
history."  That  was  a  true  saying  ;  his  own  success 
had  created  diificulties  for  him.  Once  more  he  quoted 
the  example  of  the  other  statesman  in  the  Empire  whose 
position  had  most  analogy  with  his  own.  "  I  honestly 
believe,"  he  said,  "  that  General  Botha's  difficulties 
were  small  compared  with  those  we  had  to  confront  in 
Ireland.  ...  It  is  true  to  say  at  this  moment  that  the 
overwhelming  sentiment  of  the  Irish  people  is  with  the 
Empire  for  the  first  time." 

That  was  his  claim,  and  in  that  month  of  January  1916 
he  was  fully  entitled  to  make  it ;  and  the  House,  I  think, 
recognized  his  justification.  His  speech  has  in  it  the 
ring  of  confidence,  of  assurance  that  he  would  be  taken 
at  his  word. 

"  Rest  satisfied,"  he  said ;  "do  not  try  to  drive  Ire- 
land." Wise  words,  and  they  were  not  unwisely  listened 
to.  There  was  no  room  for  doubting  this  man's  earnest- 
ness when  he  went  on  to  tell  how  he  himself  had  recently 
met  Irish  troops  in  the  field,  and  had  then  pledged  him- 
self to  them  to  spare  no  effort  in  raising  the  necessary 
reserves  for  their  ranks  among  their  own  countrymen. 
*'  Trust  us,"  he  said  to  the  House,  indicating  himself 
and  his  colleagues,  "  trust  us  to  know,  after  all,  the  best 
methods.  Do  not  carp  at  Irish  effort,  and  do  not  belittle 
Irish  effort."  Then  they  might  count  on  loyal  and 
enduring  support  till  the  great  struggle  was  ended. 

That  speech,  as  I  read  it,  marks  the  highwater-line 
of  Redmond's  achievement.  His  statesmanship  in  the 
counsels  of  the  Empire  had  prevailed  for  his  own  country. 
The  Home  Rule  Act  was  on  the  Statute  Book,  and  though 
not  in  legal  operation  it  was  present  in  all  minds ;    and 


THE  RAISING  OF  THE  IRISH  BRIGADES     213 

now  on  a  supreme  issue — the  blood-tax — Ireland's  right 
to  be  treated  as  self-governing  was  recognized  in  fact. 
The  argument  which  underlay  implicitly  Redmond's 
whole  contention  was  never  set  out ;  it  was  contentious, 
politically,  and  he  wisely  avoided  it.  He  spoke  for  a 
nation  to  which  autonomy  had  been  accorded  by  statute  ; 
he  preferred  men  to  feel  for  themselves  rather  than  be 
asked  to  admit  that  no  self-governing  nation  will  submit 
voluntarily  to  the  imposition  of  the  blood-tax  without 
its  own  most  formal  consent.  All  that  he  said  was,  in 
effect :  You  have  Ireland  with  you  for  the  first  time, 
by  our  assistance  ;  do  not  destroy  our  power  to  continue 
that  assistance,  do  not  alienate  Ireland.  In  the  counsels 
of  the  Empire  his  argument  prevailed  ;  and  during  the 
early  months  of  1916  the  relations  between  Great  Britain 
and  Ireland  were  better  and  happier  than  at  any  time 
of  which  history  holds  record.  An  utterance  from  one 
Irishman,  and  the  general  response  to  it,  showed  this 
in  extraordinary  degree. 

Our  Division,  or  rather  two  brigades  of  it,  had  detrained 
in  France  on  the  19th  of  December  ;  the  first  impression 
as  we  shook  ourselves  together  for  the  march  to  strange 
billets  was?  the  sound  of  guns.  Scattered  about  in  different 
villages  lying  round  B6thune,  our  battalions  passed  the 
next  two  months  in  the  usual  training  before  we  should 
take  up  our  own  sector  of  the  line,  and  we  saw  little 
or  nothing  of  each  other.  March  found  us  engaged, 
though  still  only  attached  by  companies  to  more  seasoned 
troops,  in  some  rough  crater-fighting  on  the  ugly  mine- 
riddled  stretch  between  Loos  and  Hulluch.  It  was  when 
we  were  marching  out  from  broken  houses  about  the 
minehead  at  Annequin  that  we  first  met  again  our  old 
stable  companions,  the  Royal  Irish — and  that  I  first 
saw  Willie  Redmond  in  France  at  the  head  of  his  company. 

He  was  on  foot  as  always,  for  he  never  could  be  per- 
suaded to  ride  while  the  men  were  marching,  and  I  never 
saw  more  geniality  of  greeting  on  any  countenance  than 


214  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST   YEARS 

was  on  his  when  he  came  up  with  outstretched  hand  to 
where  I  was  sitting  by  the  roadside — for  we  had  halted 
to  see  them  go  by.  Here  was  a  man  utterly  in  his  element, 
radiant  literally  in  the  enthusiasm  of  his  devotion.  He 
refused  to  listen  to  our  talk  of  the  bad  time  we  had  been 
through  in  the  place  M'here  they  were  to  succeed  us  (and 
in  two  winters  of  that  war  I  never  saw  worse)  ;  all  his 
talk  was  of  the  good  time  which  we  should  have  in  the 
billets  we  were  going  to,  which  they  had  just  left.  Back 
there,  in  and  about  AUouagne,  they  rejoined  us  ;  and 
I  remember  dining  with  him  in  his  company  mess  and 
hearing  his  eulogies  of  the  splendid  felloAvs  that  his  com- 
pany officers  were.  Then,  about  the  time  we  moved 
up  into  trenches,  our  first  leaves  began  and  he  got  home 
in  March.  Naturally,  he  looked  in  at  the  House  of 
Commons,  and  realized  for  the  first  time  how  uneasy 
well-informed  persons  in  the  lobbies  were  about  the 
chances  of  the  war.  Everybody  who  ever  came  home 
from  the  front  must  have  experienced  the  effect  of  that 
strange  transition  from  unquestioning  confidence  to 
worried  anxiety  ;  but  Willie  Redmond  was  the  only  man 
who  ever  adequately  gave  expression  to  it. 

It  was  on  the  eve  of  St.  Patrick's  Day,  and  the  Army 
Estimates  were  under  discussion  in  a  very  thin  House 
— a  wrangling,  fault-finding  debate.  In  the  middle  of  it 
Willie  Redmond  got  up,  and  said  that  as  he  was  not 
likely  to  be  there  again,  he  had  one  or  two  things  to  say 
which  he  thought  the  House  would  be  glad  to  know. 
Speaking  as  one  of  the  oldest  members,  who  had  all  but 
completed  his  thirty-third  year  in  Parliament,  he  told 
them  that  every  soul  in  the  House  should  be  proud  of 
the  troops — not  of  the  Irish  troops,  but  of  the  troops 
generally'' — because  more  than  anything  else  of  the 
splendid  spirit  in  which  they  were  going  through  the 
privations  and  dangers, — which  he  described  with  passion. 
If  he  were  to  deliver  a  message  from  the  troops,  he  knew 
well  what  it  would  be  : 


THE  RAISING  OF  THE  IRISH  BRIGADES     215 

*'  Send  us  out  the  reinforcomenta  which  are  necessary, 
and  which  are  naturally  necessary.  Send  us  out,  as  we 
admit  you  have  been  doing  up  to  this,  the  necessary 
supplies,  and  when  j^ou  do  that,  have  trust  in  the  men 
who  are  in  the  gap  to  conduct  the  war  to  the  victory 
which  everyone  at  the  front  is  confident  is  bound  to  come. 
*  And  when  victory  does  come,'  the  message  would  run 
on,  '  you  in  the  House  of  Commons,  in  the  countr\%  and 
in  every  newspaper  in  the  countr^^  can  spend  the  rest 
of  your  lives  in  discussing  as  to  whether  the  victory  has 
been  won  on  proper  lines  or  whether  it  has  not,'  Nothing 
in  the  world  can  depress  the  spirits  of  the  men  that  I 
have  seen  at  the  front.  I  do  not  believe  that  there  was 
ever  enough  Germans  born  into  this  world  to  depress 
them.  If  it  were  possible  to  depress  them  at  all,  it  can 
only  be  done  by  pursuing  a  course  of  embittered  con- 
troversy in  this  country — as  to  which  was  the  right  way 
or  the  wrong  way  of  conducting  affairs  at  the  front.  When 
a  man  feels  that  his  feet  are  fi-eezing,  when  he  is  standing 
in  heavy  rain  for  a  whole  night  with  no  shelter,  and  when 
next  morning  he  tries  to  cook  a  piece  of  scanty  food  over 
the  scanty  flame  of  a  brazier  in  the  mud,  he  perhaps  sits 
down  for  a  few  minutes  in  the  day's  dawn  and  takes  up 
an  old  newspaper,  and  finds  speeches  and  leading  articles 
from  time  to  time  which  tell  him  that  apparently  everj^- 
thing  is  going  wrong,  that  the  Ministers  who  are  at  the 
head  of  affairs  in  this  country,  upon  whom  he  is  depend- 
ing, are  not  really  men  with  their  hearts  in  the  work,  but 
are  really  more  or  less  callous  and  calculating  mercen- 
aries, who  are  not  directing  affairs  in  tlie  best  way,  but 
are  simply  anxious  to  maintain  their  own  salaries.  I 
say  that  when  speeches  and  articles  of  that  kind  are  found 
in  the  newspapers  they  are  calculated,  if  anything  is  or 
can  be  so  calculated,  to  depress  the  men  who  are  at  the 
front." 


Then  came  a  few  words  in  praise  of  the  Irish  troops 
and  in  deprecation  of  the  failure  to  recognize  some  of 
their  services  ;  a  confident  assurance  that,  "  whether  they 
are  remembered  or  not,"  the  Sixteenth  Division  would  do 
their  duty,  with  an  equal  assurance  that  the  Ulster  men 
would  do  as  well  as  they — and  he  reached  to  his  conclusion ; 


216  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

*'  Since  I  went  out  there  I  found  that  the  common 
salutation  in  all  circumstances  is  one  of  cheer.  If  things 
go  pretty  well  and  the  men  are  fairly  comfortable,  they 
say  '  Cheer  0  !  '  If  things  go  badly,  and  the  snow  falls 
and  the  rain  comes  througih  the  roof  of  a  billet  in  an 
impossible  sort  of  cow-house,  they  say  '  Cheer  0  !  '  still 
more.  All  we  want  out  there  is  that  you  shall  adopt 
the  same  tone  and  say  '  Cheer  O  !  '  to  us." 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  this  speech  was  received 
with  a  cry  of  gratitude  all  over  the  country  and  through- 
out the  Army.  It  said  what  badly  needed  to  be  said, 
and  said  it  with  a  freshness  and  a  dash  that  came  superbly 
from  a  company  commander  in  his  fifty-fourth  year. 
It  was  the  best  service  that  had  yet  been  rendered  to 
John  Redmond's  policy.  Everybody  quite  naturally 
and  simply  accepted  the  Nationalist  Irishman  as  the 
spokesman  for  all  the  troops  who  were  actuallj'^  in  the 
line.  Mr.  Walter  Long,  always  a  generous  and  candid 
human  being,  was  quick  to  give  voice  to  this  feeling  : 

'*  The  honourable  and  gallant  member  for  East  Clare 
has  been  in  conflict,  not  only  with  one  particular  political 
party,  but  during  the  greater  part  of  his  career  with 
every  party  in  turn,  and  has  engaged  in  bitter  controversy 
with  them.  Does  anybody  doubt  the  fact  that  when 
war  was  declared  one  great  factor  in  the  mind  of  the 
Emperor  responsible  for  this  war  was  that  dissension 
would  paralyse  the  hands  of  Great  Britain  ?  Ireland, 
whatever  may  have  been  our  differences  in  the  past,  and 
whatever  may  be  our  differences  in  happier  days  again 
when  wo  are  at  peace,  everybody  must  feel  by  the  action 
of  her  representatives,  who  have  fought  so  bitterly  in 
this  House  and  in  the  country,  has  created  a  new  claim 
for  herself  upon  the  affection,  the  gratitude,  the  respect 
of  the  people  of  the  Empire  b)''  the  great  and  proud  part 
that  she  has  played  in  this  great  struggle." 

That  was  the  position  to  which  Redmond's  policy, 
backed  by  the  Irishmen  who  supported  it  with  their 
lives,  of  whom  his  brother  was  the  outstanding  represen- 


THE  RAISING  OF  THE  IRISH  BRIGADES     217 

tative,  had  brought  this  great  issue.  The  next  thing 
which  brought  the  name  of  Ireland  prominently  before 
the  world  was  the  story  of  action  taken  by  other  Irish- 
men, also  at  the  risk  of  their  lives,  to  reverse  the  strong 
current  which  was  then  carrying  us  forward  with  so 
hopeful  augury. 


CHAPTER  VII 
THE  REBELLION  AND  ITS   SEQUEL 


THE  facts  of  the  Irish  rebellion  are  too  generally 
familiar  to  need  more  than  the  briefest  restatement 
— and  perhaps  too  little  known  for  an  attempt  at  detailed 
analysis.  Broadly,  a  general  parade  of  the  Irish  Volun- 
teers all  over  the  country  was  ordered  for  Easter  Sunday. 
On  the  night  before  Good  Friday  a  German  ship  with  a 
cargo  of  rifles  was  off  the  Irish  coast.  This  ship,  the 
And,  was  a  few  hours  later  captured  and  taken  in  convoy 
by  a  British  sloop,  so  that  the  arms  were  never  landed. 
Emissaries  from  the  Volunteers  who  had  gone  to  Kerry 
by  motor-car  to  receive  and  arrange  for  distributing  the 
arms  were  killed  in  a  motor  accident  while  hurrying 
back  to  get  in  touch  with  their  headquarters.  On  Satur- 
day the  general  parade  was  cancelled  by  order  of  Professor 
MacNeill,  chief  of  the  Volunteer  organization.  On 
Monday,  against  his  wish,  a  portion  of  the  Volunteer 
force  in  Dublin,  including  the  battalion  specially  under 
command  of  Pearse  and  MacDonagh,  with  the  Citizen 
Army  under  James  Connolly,  paraded,  scattered  through 
the  city  and  seized  certain  previously  selected  j)oint8, 
of  which  the  most  important  was  the  Post  Office.  From 
it  as  headquarters  thej-  proclaimed  an  Irish  Republic. 
Slight  attempts  at  rising  took  place  in  county  Wexford, 
where  the  town  of  Enniscorthy  was  seized,  in  county 
Galway,  and  in  county  Louth.  At  Galway,  at  VTexford 
and   at  Drogheda   the   National  Volunteera   turned  out 

to  assist  in  suppressing  the  rising.    Except  for  a  serious 

sas 


THE  REBELLION  AND  ITS  SEQUEL       219 

encounter  with  a  police  force  in  county  Dublin,  the  fight- 
ing was  confined  to  the  capital.  It  terminated  by  the 
unconditional  surrender  of  the  rebels  on  the  Saturday. 
The  struggle  was  prolonged  by  the  total  lack  of  artillery 
in  the  early  stages.  Riflemen  established  in  houses 
could  not  be  dislodged  by  direct  assault  of  infantry 
without  very  heavy  casualties  to  the  attacking  force. 

The  purpose  of  this  book  is  to  show  Redmond's  con- 
nection with  tliis  event  and  the  succeeding  developments 
from  it.  He  failed  to  foresee  the  event ;  he  failed  to 
direct  its  develoi^ments  into  the  course  he  desired.  How 
far  he  is  to  be  held  responsible,  or  blameworthy,  for 
these  failures,  readers  may  be  assisted  to  decide. 

From  the  beginning  of  1916  onwards  the  Irish  Govern- 
ment was  earned  of  danger.  One  of  its  members — the 
Attorney-General,  Sir  James  Campbell— advocated  the 
seizure  of  arms  from  men  parading  with  what  were 
evidently  stolen  service  rifles  or  bayonets.  But  the 
Chief  Secretary  refused  to  take  any  action  w'hich  could 
be  described  as  an  attempt  to  suppress  or  disarm  the 
Irish  Volunteers  until  there  was  definite  evidence  of 
actual  association  with  the  enemy. 

Proof  of  sympathy  was  not  difficult  to  obtain,  and  the 
propaganda  against  recruiting  had  now^  reached  the 
point  of  attempts  to  break  up  recruiting  meetings.  Still, 
Mr.  Birrell  was  in  a  difficulty.  He  had  a  logical  mind, 
and  he  knew  what  had  been  permitted  to  Ulster.  The 
fact  that  the  Attorney-General  himself  had  been  a  main 
adviser  of  the  Provisional  Government  did  not  make  it 
easier  to  follow  his  advice  to  disarm  men  who  professed 
disaffection  to  the  existing  authority.  Mr.  Birrell 
knew  that  if  he  took  such  action  he  could  be  attacked 
in  the  official  Nationalist  Press  for  having  one  law  in 
Ulster  and  another  in  the  South.  Further,  Redmond 
would  certainly  not  have  disavow^ed,  and  might  even 
have  endorsed,  such  a  line  of  criticism.  The  reason 
was   that   Redmond,   as   he   had  never   believed  in   the 


220  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

reality  of    the   Ulster   danger,    so   now   did   not  believe 
in  this  one. 

Later,  when  Mr.  Birrell  resigned  his  post  after  the 
insurrection  was  suppressed,  Redmond  chivalrously  took 
on  himself  a  part  of  the  responsibility.  "  I  feel,"  he 
said,  "  that  I  have  incurred  some  share  of  the  blame 
which  he  has  laid  at  his  own  door,  because  I  entirely 
agreed  with  his  view  that  the  danger  of  an  outbreak  of  the 
kind  was  not  a  real  one,  and  in  my  conversations  with 
him  I  have  expressed  that  view,  and  for  all  I  know  that 
may  have  influenced  him  in  his  conduct  and  his  manage- 
ment of  Irish  affairs."  A  later  debate — on  July  31st — 
showed  that  his  strong  personal  feeling  for  Mr.  Birrell 
had  moved  him  rather  to  overstate  than  to  belittle  his 
advisory  responsibility.  Dublin  Castle  had  never  con- 
sulted him  as  to  policy.  Conferences  had  taken  place 
with  the  L'nder-Secretary,  Sir  Matthew  Nathan,  but 
these  were  concerned  with  considering  and  framing  the 
machinery  to  be  created  for  bringing  the  Home  Rule 
Act  into  operation,  whenever  the  time  came. 

"  There  was  no  conference  at  all  about  the  state  of 
the  country  or  about  Sinn  F6in.  When  once  or  twice 
in  casual  consultation  the  matter  came  up — I  hope  the 
House  will  listen  to  this — I  did  not  hesitate  to  say  what 
in  my  opinion  ought  to  be  done  in  certain  cases  by  the 
Government.  For  example,  I  expressed  a  strong  view 
to  them  as  to  how  they  should  deal  with  seditious  news- 
papers and  with  prosecutions.  What  I  did  suggest,  they 
never  did  ;  what  I  said  they  ought  not  to  do,  they  always 
did.  And  I  want  to  say  something  further.  They 
never  gave  me  any  information,  bad  or  good,  about  the 
state  of  the  country.  From  first  to  last  I  never  saw 
one  single  confidential  Government  report  from  the 
police  or  from  any  other  source.  I  know  nothing  what- 
ever about  their  secret  confidential  information." 

It  is  fair  to  add  that  the  Under-Secretary  was  in  com- 
munication from  time  to  time  with  other  members  of 


THE   REBELLION  AND  ITS   SEQUEL       221 

the  party,  who  were  of  course  In  touch  with  Redmond. 
But  the  substantial  accuracy  of  Redmond's  statement 
is  sufficiently  evidenced  by  one  fact.  Everybody  knew 
that  Sir  Roger  Casement  was  in  Berlin  and  had  tried — 
most  unsuccessfully — to  recruit  an  Irish  Brigade  from 
among  the  Irish  prisoners.  But  neither  Redmond  nor 
any  Irish  member  knew  that  from  April  17th  Dublin 
Castle  had  warning  that  a  ship  was  on  its  way  from 
Germany  with  rifles.  The  Navy  was  on  the  alert,  and 
when  the  And  came  off  Fenit,  in  Kerry,  on  Good  Friday 
morning,  she  was  promptly  challenged. »  But  in  the 
dark  hours  of  that  morning  she  had  landed  Sir  Roger 
Casement  and  his  two  confederates,  one  of  whom  was 
arrested  with  him  the  same  day.  On  Saturday  morning 
Government  decided  to  take  action  against  what  was 
now  clearly  a  rebel  organization.  But  as  the  Chief 
Secretary  and  the  General  Commanding  in  Chief  were 
both  in  London,  and  as  the  available  force  of  men  in 
Dublin  was  small,  a  postponement  was  decided  on.  No 
special  precautions  appear  to  have  been  taken  against 
the  contingency  of  an  immediate  rising.  On  Monday 
a  very  large  proportion  of  the  officers  from  the  Curragh 
and  the  Dublin  garrison  were  at  the  Fairyhouse  races. 
In  the  Castle  itself  there  was  only  the  ordinary  guard. 
Redmond  at  this  date  was  also  in  London.  His  lack 
of  apprehension  is  sufficiently  indicated  by  the  fact  that 
his  son  and  daughter  were  both  at  the  races,  and  drove 
up  unknowinglj'  to  an  armed  barricade.  Had  he  been 
in  authority  and  known,  as  the  Government  knew  on 
Saturday,  that  the  Irish  Volunteers  expected  and  had 
arranged  for  the  landing  of  a  heavy  cargo  of  arms  on 
Good  Friday,  and  that  a  general  parade  of  their  men 
had  been  ordered  for  Easter,  I  hope  that  he  would  have 
either  had  troops  in  the  utmost  readiness  to  move,  or 
have  put  strong  guards  in  places   of  importance.     But 

'  The  Admiralty  do  not   appear  to  have   communicated   their 
information  to  Dublin  Castle. 


222  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

thi8   is    a   futile  speculation,  for  had  he  been  in  power 
the  situation  would  never  have  arisen. 

The  decisive  thing  which  drove  most  of  the  relatively 
small  number  among  the  Volunteers  who  broke  away 
from  Redmond  into  their  original  hostility  was  Govern- 
ment's failure  to  recognize  them.  Their  force  stood  in 
their  own  eyes  for  the  assertion  of  Ireland's  nationality  ; 
and  many  of  those  who  took  active  part  in  the  rebellion 
were  at  the  outset  fully  prepared  to  assert  that  nationality 
in  jeopardy  of  their  lives  in  the  Allied  cause.  Redmond's 
policy,  had  effect  been  given  to  it  by  the  Government, 
still  more  had  he  himself  been  invested  with  the  right 
to  embody  it  in  action,  would  have  prevented  the  estrange- 
ment of  all  but  a  very  few.  Once  the  estrangement 
took  place,  however,  I  think  that  he  undervalued  what 
was  opposed  to  him,  both  in  respect  of  its  power  and  of 
its  quality.  He  lacked  appreciation  and  respect  for 
the  idealists  whose  ideals  were  not  his  own.  He  under- 
rated their  sincerity,  and  the  danger  of  their  sincerity. 
The  beauty  of  sacrifice  in  the  young  men  who  went  out 
to  the  war,  carrying  Ireland's  cause  in  their  keeping, 
moved  him  profoundly  ;  and  he  saw  the  practical  bearing 
of  their  acts  on  the  great  practical  problem  of  statesman- 
ship to  which  his  life  had  been  given.  He  did  not  guess 
at  the  sway  which  might  be  exercised  over  men's  minds 
by  an  almost  mystical  belief  which  disdained  to  count 
with  practicalities.  Redmond  for  fifteen  years  had  been 
the  leader,  and  for  thirty-five  years  had  been  a  member, 
of  a  party  which  presented  itself — with  great  justification 
— as  the  winner  for  Ireland  of  many  positive  material 
advantages  on  the  way  to  an  ultimate  goal.  Pearse, 
at  a  time  when  all  the  world  was  plunged  in  a  prodigal 
welter  of  destruction,  came  forward,  demanding  from 
Irishmen  nothing  but  a  sacrifice — promising  nothing  but 
the  chance  for  young  men  to  shed  their  blood  sacramentally 
in  the  cause  of  Ireland's  freedom.  Redmond  also  was 
calling  for  the  extreme  risk,  but  on  a  sane  and  sound 


THE  REBELLION  AND  ITS  SEQUEL       223 

calculation,  to  ensure  the  full  development  of  something 
already  gained.  Pearse  preached,  raystically,  the  e£B- 
oacious  power  simply  of  blood  shed  in  the  name  of  Ireland. 
Those  whom  he  brought  with  him  into  the  pass  of  danger 
were  few,  but  they  were  touched  with  his  own  spirit ; 
and  even  the  very  recklessness  of  their  act  touched  the 
popular  imagination.  Irish  regiments,  after  all,  could 
do  only  what  other  regiments  were  doing  ;  their  deeds 
were  obscured  in  a  chaos  of  war  from  which  individual 
prowess  could  not  emerge.  Pearse  and  his  associates 
ojffered  to  Irishmen  a  stage  for  themselves  on  which 
they  could  and  did  secure  full  personal  recognition — the 
complete  attention  of  Ireland's  mind. 

All  this  would  have  seemed  vanity  to  Redmond's  solid, 
positive  intelligence — vanity  in  all  senses  of  the  word. 
It  would  have  moved  him  to  nothing  but  angry  contempt 
— anger  against  the  spirit  which  was  prepared  to  divide 
Ireland's  effort,  contempt  for  the  futility  of  the  reasoning. 
But  one  aspect  of  the  rising  dominated  all  the  others 
in  his  mind.  He  had  neither  tolerance  nor  pity  for  Roger 
Casement,  who  was  in  his  eyes  simply  one  who  tried  to 
seduce  Irish  troops  by  threats  and  bribes  into  treason 
to  their  salt,  one  who  made  himself  among  the  worst 
instruments  of  Germany.  At  the  re-assembly  of  Parlia- 
ment on  April  27th  he  expressed  the  "  feeling  of  detes- 
tation and  horror "  with  which  he  and  his  colleagues 
had  regarded  the  events  in  Dublin  ;  a  feeling  which  he 
believed  to  be  shared  "  by  the  overwhelming  mass  of 
the  people  of  Ireland."  On  May  3rd,  in  a  statement 
to  the  Press,  he  denounced  fiercely  "  this  wicked  move  " 
of  men  who  *'  have  tried  to  make  Ireland  the  cat's-paw 
of  Germany."  "  Germany  plotted  it,  Germany  organized 
it,  Germany  paid  for  it."  The  men  who  were  Germany's 
agents  **  remained  in  the  safe  remoteness  of  American 
cities,"  while  "  misguided  and  insane  young  men  in 
Ireland  had  risked,  and  some  of  them  had  lost,  their  lives 
in   an   insane   anti-patriotic    movement."     It    was   anti- 


224  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

patriotic,  he  urged,  because  Ireland  held  to  the  choice 
she  had  made,  to  the  opinion  which  thousands  of  Irish 
soldiera  had  sealed  with  their  blood.  It  was  "  not  half 
so  much  treason  to  the  cause  of  the  Allies  as  treason  to 
the  cause  of  Home  Rule." 

On  the  day  when  that  statement  appeared  the  sequel 
had  begun  to  unroll  itself.  In  the  House  of  Commons 
Mr,  Asquith  announced  the  trial,  sentence  and  shooting 
of  three  signatories  to  the  Republican  proclamation — 
Pearse,  Clarke  and  MacDonagh,  With  the  exception  of 
James  Connolly,  these  were  the  men  most  directly  answer- 
able for  launching  an  attempt  which  had  cost  five  hundred 
lives  and  destroyed  over  two  millions'  worth  of  property. 
Redmond  accepted  their  doom  as  just. 

**  This  outbreak  happily  seems  to  be  over.  It  has 
been  dealt  with  with  firmness,  which  was  not  only  right, 
but  it  was  the  duty  of  the  Government  so  to  deal  with  it." 

But  now  that  example  had  been  made,  he  held  that 
other  thoughts  should  guide  those  in  authority. 

'*  As  the  rebellion,  or  the  outbreak,  call  it  what  you 
like,  has  been  put  down  with  firmness,  I  do  beg  the 
Government,  and  I  speak  from  the  very  bottom  of  my 
heart  and  with  all  mj''  earnestness,  not  to  show  undue 
hardship  or  severity  to  the  great  masses  of  those  who 
are  implicated,  on  whose  shoulders  there  lies  a  guilt 
far  different  from  that  which  lies  upon  the  instigators 
and  promoters  of  the  outbreak.  Let  them,  in  the  name 
of  God,  not  add  this  to  the  wretched,  miserable  memories 
of  the  Irish  people,  to  be  stored  up  perhaps  for  genera- 
tions, but  let  them  deal  with  it  in  such  a  spirit  of  leniency 
as  was  recently  exhibited  in  South  Africa  by  General 
Botha,  and  in  that  way  pave  the  way  to  the  possibility 
.  .  .  that  out  of  the  ashes  of  this  miserable  tragedy 
there  may  spring  up  something  which  will  redound  to 
the  future  happiness  of  Ireland  and  the  future  complete 
and  absolute  unity  of  this  Empire.  I  beg  of  the  Govern- 
ment, having  put  down  this  outbreak  with  firmness,  to 


THE   REBELLION   AND   ITS  SEQUEL       225 

take  only  such  action  as  will  leave  the  least  rankling 
bitterness  in  the  minds  of  the  Irish  people,  both  in  Ireland 
and  elsewliere  throughout  the  world." 

It  is  well  to  recall  what  he  liad  in  his  mind.  After 
the  suppression  of  the  South  African  rebellion  in  1014, 
one  man  only  was  put  to  death — an  officer  wlio  changed 
sides  during  an  action.  No  attempt  Avas  made  to  try 
accused  persons  before  a  jury ;  a  special  tribunal  of 
judges  was  set  up  by  the  South  African  Parliament. 
But  their  power  of  inflicting  punishment  was  limited 
by  the  Parliament  to  a  sentence  of  three  years.  General 
de  Wet,  the  chief  figure  in  the  rebellion,  was  dismissed 
without  punishment  to  his  farm.  That  was  the  manner 
in  which  a  strong  native  Government,  realizing  the  possi- 
bilities of  future  trouble,  dealt  with  an  insurrection 
infinitely  more  serious  in  a  military  sense  than  that 
which  broke  out  in  Dublin.  But  in  Ireland  there  was 
no  native  government  ;  and  the  announcement  of  Mr. 
Birrell's  resignation  meant  in  reality  that  Mr.  Asquith's 
Ministry  had  abdicated  so  far  as  Ireland  was  concerned. 
Quite  properly,  they  had  called  in  a  competent  soldier 
to  deal  with  the  military  exigency.  Quite  shamefully, 
they  left  him  in  sole  authority  to  handle  what  was 
essentially  the  task  of  statesmanship. 

Everybody  saw  that  in  such  a  case  the  need  was  to 
prevent  a  rebellious  spirit  from  spreading.  Sir  John 
Maxwell  took  the  simple  view  that  the  way  to  secure 
this  was  by  plenty  of  executions.  Knowledge  of  Irish 
history  cannot  be  expected  in  an  English  Minister,  still 
less  in  an  English  soldier  ;  but  it  could  have  taught 
him  how  often  and  how  ineffectually  that  recipe  had 
been  applied.  vStill  less  could  it  be  hoped  that  a  soldier, 
in  no  sense  bound  to  the  study  of  contemporary  politics, 
should  allow  for  the  effect  of  two  factors  which  must 
certainly  influence  Irish  judgment  and  Irish  feeling. 
The  first  of  these  was  the  precedent  within  the  Empire 
created  by  General  Botha's  Government.     This,  I  think, 

10 


226  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

English  opinion  generally,  and  particularly  English 
Imperialist  opinion,  wholly  disregarded  ;  but  it  was 
the  point  to  which  Redmond  had  instantly  directed 
attention.  For  him,  the  idea  of  an  Imperial  Common- 
wealth of  States  was  a  reality,  and  within  one  Common- 
w^ealth  there  cannot  be  two  standards  of  justice.  The 
second  factor  was  the  licence  accorded  by  a  Liberal 
Government,  and  the  sanction  given  by  a  Tory  Opposition, 
to  preparations  for  rebellion,  and  acts  of  rebellion,  in 
Ulster.  This  was  generally  recognized  by  public  opinion, 
though  I  think  deliberately  set  aside  by  Sir  John  Maxwell 
— who  perhaps  is  not  to  be  blamed.  But  the  Prime 
Minister,  who  had  been  chiefly  and  ultimately  responsible 
for  the  decision  to  let  Ulstermen  do  as  they  liked,  was 
specially  bound  to  consider  and  provide  for  the  conse- 
quences of  that  line  of  policy  in  the  i^ast  as  it  affected 
the  present  development.  He  was  also,  as  the  Minister 
responsible  alike  for  carrying  a  Home  Rule  Act  and  for 
denying  to  it  operation,  specially  bound  in  such  a  pass 
as  this  to  be  guided  largely  by  the  judgment  of  the  man 
who  but  for  that  postponement  would  have  been  head 
of  an  Irish  Government.  But,  under  the  various  pressures 
of  the  moment,  Mr.  Asquith  moved  in  a  wholly  different 
direction.  Redmond's  appeal  and  advice  went  totally 
disregarded.  Yet  Redmond  knew  Ireland  as  no 
Englishman  could  know  it ;  and  his  hands  were  clean 
of  guilt  for  what  had  happened.  Mr.  Asquith  by  his 
past  inaction,  his  Tory  colleagues  by  their  action  before 
the  war,  were  deeply  involved  in  resj)onsibility.  It  is 
difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  find  in  Mr.  Asquith's  conduct 
any  recognition  of  this  cardinal  fact.  He  judged  rebels 
as  if  preparations  for  rebellion  had  never  been  palliated 
or  approved. 

All  that  Redmond  could  achieve  was  by  incessant 
personal  intervention  to  limit  the  list  of  executions, 
to  put  some  stay  on  what  he  called  later  "  the  gross  and 
panicky  violence  "  with  which  measures  of  suppression 


THE   REBELLION  AND  ITS   SEQUEL       227 

were  conceived  and  carried  out.  He  could  not  prevent 
the  amazing  procedure  of  sending  flying  columns  through- 
out the  country  into  places  where  there  had  been  no  hint 
of  disturbance,  and  making  arrests  by  the  hundred  with- 
out reason  given  or  evidence  produced.  In  manj^  cases, 
men  who  had  been  tlioroughly  disgusted  by  the  outbreak 
found  themselves  in  jail  ;  and  disaffection  was  manu- 
factured hourly. 

On  May  3rd,  when  Redmond  made  his  public  appeal 
to  Mr.  Asquith,  it  was  still  not  too  late  to  prevent  the 
mischief  from  spreading.  By  general  consent,  Redmond 
was  right  when  he  said  that  the  rising  was  thoroughly 
unpopular  in  Ireland,  and  most  of  all  in  Dublin.  The 
troops  on  whom  the  insurgents  fired  were  in  the  first 
instance  Irish  troops.  Later  in  that  year  I  was  attached 
to  one  of  these  battalions  (the  10th  Dublins),  and  asked 
them  how  they  did  their  scouting  work  during  the  con- 
flict. "  We  needed  no  scouts,"  was  the  answer  ;  "  the 
old  women  told  us  everything."  The  first  volley  which 
met  a  company  of  this  battalion  killed  an  officer  ;  he 
was  so  strongly  Nationalist  in  his  sympathy  as  to  be 
almost  a  Sinn  Feiner.  Others  had  been  active  leaders 
in  the  Howth  gun-running.  It  was  not  merely  a  case 
of  Irishmen  firing  on  their  fellow-countrymen  :  it  was 
one  section  of  the  original  Volunteers  firing  on  another. 

Yet  from  the  moment  when  English  troops  came  on 
the  scene,  another  strain  of  feeling  began  to  make  itself 
felt.  A  lady  ordered  tea  to  be  made  for  one  of  the  in- 
coming regiments,  halted  outside  her  house  on  the  line 
of  march.  The  refreshment  was  long  in  coming,  and 
she  went  down  to  see  why.  She  found  her  cook  up  in 
arms  :  "  Is  it  me  boil  the  kettle  for  Englishmen  coming 
in  to  shoot  down  Irishmen  ?  "  Yet  that  was  still  the 
voice  of  a  minority.  When  I  came  home  from  France 
a  few  weeks  later,  a  shrewd  and  j^rosperous  Nationalist 
man  of  business  said  to  me  with  fury  :  "  The  fools  ! 
It  was    the  first  rebellion  that   ever   had   the   country 


228  JOHN   REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

against   it,    and    they    turned    the    people    round    in    a 
week." 

Nothing  could  have  prevented  the  halo  of  martyrdom 
from  attaching  itself  to  those  who  died  by  the  law  for 
the  sake  of  Irish  freedom  :  the  tradition  was  too  deeply 
ingrained  in  Ireland's  history.  Yet  Redmond  did  not  go 
beyond  the  measure  of  average  Irish  opinion  when  he 
accepted  the  first  three  executions  as  just.  People  at 
least  knew  who  these  men  were,  and  their  signatures  to 
the  proclamation  of  an  Irish  Republic  proved  their  leader- 
ship. They  were  given  the  death  of  rebels  in  arms, 
to  which  no  dishonour  attaches.  But  a  fatal  mistake 
was  made  in  suppressing  all  report  of  the  proceedings 
of  the  court-martial  on  them,  and  this  mistake  was  to 
be  repeated  indefinitely.  Ireland  was  made  to  feel  that 
this  whole  affair  was  taken  completely  out  of  the  hands 
of  Irishmen — that  no  attempt  even  was  made  to  enlist 
Irish  opinion  on  the  side  of  law  by  a  statement  of  the 
evidence  on  which  law  acted.  Day  by  day  there  was  a 
new  bald  announcement  that  such  and  such  men  had 
been  shot ;  and  these  were  men  whose  names  Ireland 
at  large  had  never  heard  of. 

Then  on  top  of  all  came  the  appalling  admission  that 
an  officer  suffering  from  insanity  had  taken  out  three 
prisoners  and  caused  them  to  be  shot  without  trial  on 
his  OAvn  responsibility,  none  of  these  men  having  any 
complicity  with  the  rebellion.  This  incident  would  have 
inflamed  public  opinion  in  any  community  ;  in  Ireland 
its  effect  was  beyond  words  poisonous.  It  revived  the 
atmosphere  of  the  Bachelor's  Walk  incident ;  and  there 
was  only  too  much  justification  for  holding  that  the 
military  authorities  were  indisposed  to  take  the  proper 
disciplinary  action.  Its  effect  detracted  from  the  excellent 
opinion  which  the  troops  generally  had  earned  by  their 
conduct  :  it  instilled  venom  into  the  resentment  of  those 
few  cases  (and  it  was  beyond  hope  that  they  should  not 
occur)   in    which   soldiers   had  either    lost   their    heads 


THE  REBELLION  AND  ITS  SEQUEL       229 

or  yielded  to  the  temptation  of  revenge  in  its  ugliest 
shapes. 

The  result  can  be  best  expressed  by  recording  the 
experience  of  one  Sinn  Feiner  who  was  captured  in  the 
fighting.  While  the  military  escort  was  taking  him 
through  the  streets  to  his  place  of  confinement,  a  crowd 
gathered  round  and  ran  along,  consisting  of  angry  men 
and  women  who  had  seen  bloodshed  and  known  hunger 
during  these  days.  They  shouted  to  the  soldiers  to 
knock  his  brains  out  there  and  then.  Three  weeks  later 
he  was  again  marched  through  the  streets  on  his  way 
to  an  English  prison,  and  again  a  crowd  mustered.  But 
this  time,  to  his  amazement,  they  were  shouting  :  "  God 
save  you  !  God  have  pity  on  you  !  Keep  your  heart 
up  !     Ireland's  not  dead  yet !  " 

These  were  the  effects  produced  in  Ireland  on  the  mind 
of  common  people  by  the  action  of  Government  in  en- 
forcing the  ultimate  sanction  of  law  which  the  members 
of  that  same  Government  by  their  action  and  by  their 
inaction  had  brought  into  contempt.  In  England,  in 
the  meanwhile,  a  new  Military  Service  Bill  was  going 
through  the  House,  and  naturally  attempts  to  include 
Ireland  in  its  operation  were  renewed.  Sir  Edward 
Carson,  criticizing  the  Government  of  Ireland,  said  that 
(as  Redmond  put  it  in  replying)  Nationalists  had  held 
the  power  but  not  the  responsibility.  There  was  a  note 
of  angry  protest  in  the  Irish  Leader's  rejoinder.  "  I 
wish  to  say  for  myself  that  certainly  since  the  Coalition 
Government  came  into  operation,  and  before  it,  but 
certainly  since  then,  I  have  had  no  power  in  the  Govern- 
ment of  Ireland.  All  my  opinions  have  been  overborne. 
My  suggestions  have  been  rejected,  and  my  profound 
conviction  is  that  if  we  had  had  the  power  and  the  respon- 
sibility for  the  Government  of  our  country  during  the 
past  two  years,  recent  occurrences  in  Ireland  Avould 
never  have  taken  place." 

I  think  that  view  was  at  that  moment  very  generally 


230  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

shared  in  England.  The  British  Press  had  shown  by 
their  attitude  towards  the  events  in  Dublin  how  deeply 
Redmond  had  made  his  mark.  Almost  without  exception 
Unionist  papers  refrained  from  any  attempt  to  identify 
Nationalist  Ireland  generally  with  the  rising  :  they  did 
full  justice  to  the  valour  and  the  sufferings  of  Irish  troops 
— who,  indeed,  at  that  very  moment  were  passing  through 
a  cruel  ordeal.  In  that  Easter  week  the  Sixteenth  Divi- 
sion was  subjected  to  two  attacks  with  poison  gas  of  a 
concentration  and  violence  till  then  unknown,  and  under 
weather  conditions  wliich  prolonged  the  ordeal  beyond 
endurance.  The  48th  and  49th  Brigades  had  very  terrible 
losses.     We  of  the  47th  relieved  them  in  the  line. 

That  was  a  long  tour  of  trenches,  some  eighteen  days 
beginning  on  the  29th  of  April,  and  throughout  it  papers 
came  in  with  the  Irish  news.  I  shall  never  forget  the 
men's  indignation.  They  felt  tliey  had  been  stabbed 
in  the  back.  For  myself,  I  thought  that  a  situation 
had  arisen  in  which  Irish  members  who  were  serving 
had  a  more  imperative  duty  at  home,  and  I  went  to 
discuss  the  matter  with  Willie  Redmond,  whose  battalion 
was  then  holding  the  front  line  to  the  left  of  Loos. 

I  found  him  in  the  deep  company  commander's  dug- 
out in  the  bay  of  line  opposite  Puits  14  bis,  which  will 
be  known  to  many  Irish  soldiers.  We  came  up  to  the 
light  to  talk,  and  he  agreed  with  me  in  my  view.  We 
arranged  that  each  of  us  should  discuss  with  his  com- 
manding officer  the  question  of  asking  for  special  leave. 
Mine  advised  me  to  go,  and  I  have  no  earthly  doubt 
that  his  M'ould  have  said,  or  did  say,  the  same  ;  but  Willie 
Redmond  never  brought  himself  to  leave  his  men.  Next 
month,  however,  he  was  invalided  back,  very  seriously  ill. 

But  in  our  talk  that  day,  when  we  discussed  the  possi- 
bility of  our  having  some  special  influence,  he  said  this  : 
"  Don't  imagine  that  what  you  and  I  have  done  is  going 
to  make  us  pojmlar  with  our  people.  On  the  contrary, 
we  shall  both  be  sent  to  the  right  about  at  the  first 


THE  REBELLION  AND  ITS  SEQUEL       231 

General  Election."  I  think  he  Avas  wrong,  at  least  to 
this  extent,  that  any  man  who  served  would  not  have 
lessened  his  chance  by  doing  so.  When  the  tide  flowed 
strongest  against  us,  in  three  provinces  one  Nationalist 
only  kept  his  seat — John  Redmond's  son,  Major  William 
Archer  Redmond. 


II 

Already  the  tide  had  begun  to  turn  in  Ireland.  On 
May  11th  Mr.  Dillon — who  had  been  in  Dublin  during 
the  rebellion — moved  the  adjournment  of  the  House  to 
demand  that  Government  should  state  whether  they 
intended  to  have  more  executions  upon  the  finding  of 
secret  tribunals,  and  to  continue  the  searches  and  whole- 
sale arrests  which  were  going  on  through  the  country. 
The  list  of  executions  had  now  reached  fourteen,  and  no 
word  of  evidence  had  been  published.  Also  the  Prime 
Minister  stated  that  he  heard  for  the  first  time  of  the 
shooting  of  Mr.  Sheehy-Skeffington  and  others  by  CajDtain 
Bowen  Colthurst.  Unquestionably,  discussion  was  ur- 
gently needed,  and  Mr.  Dillon  was  fully  justified  in 
emphasizing  the  mischief  done  in  Ireland  by  alienating 
men's  minds.  But  Mr.  Dillon  spoke  as  one  who  felt  to 
the  uttermost  the  passion  of  resentment  which  he 
depicted,  and  in  his  indignation  against  charges  which 
had  been  brought  against  the  insurgents,  he  was  led  to 
praise  their  conduct  almost  to  the  disparagement  of 
soldiers  in  the  field.  Even  in  print  the  speech  seethes 
with  growing  passion ;  and  its  delivery,  I  am  told, 
accentuated  its  bitterness  and  its  anti-English  tone. 

It  would  be  futile  to  deny  that  this  utterance  had  a 
great  effect  in  Ireland  and  in  England,  or  to  conceal 
Redmond's  view  that  the  effect  was  most  lamentable. 
But  it  had  one  notable  result.  Mr.  Asquith,  in  replying, 
announced  his  intention  to  visit  Ireland  and  look  into 


232  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

the  situation  for  himself.  Within  a  fortnight — on  May 
25th — he  reported  to  the  House  his  impressions. 

"  The  first  was  the  breakdown  of  the  existing  machinery 
of  the  Irish  Government ;  and  the  next  was  the  strength 
and  depth,  and  I  might  almost  say,  I  think  without  exag- 
geration, the  universality  of  the  feeling  in  Ireland  that 
we  have  now  a  unique  opportunity  for  a  new  departure 
for  the  settlement  of  outstanding  problems,  and  for  a 
joint  and  combined  effort  to  obtain  agreement  as  to  the 
way  in  which  the  Government  of  Ireland  is  for  the  future 
to  be  carried  on." 

He  indicated  that  an  attempt  would  be  made  to  renew 
negotiations  for  a  settlement  which  would  enable  the 
Home  Rule  Act  to  be  brought  into  operation  at  once  ; 
and  that  Mr.  Lloyd  George  had  consented  to  undertake 
the  task  of  reconciling  parties.  But  he  begged  that 
there  should  be  no  debate  upon  this  proposal  or  upon 
Irish  affairs  at  all.  Redmond,  in  accepting,  said  that 
the  request  for  acceptance  without  discussion  was  putting 
the  goodwill  of  Nationalists  to  a  very  severe  test. — A 
discussion  would  at  once  have  produced  this  criticism  : 
that  Ireland  would  say  to-morrow,  "  The  Parliamentary 
party  brought  to  Ireland  a  post-dated  order  for  Home 
Rule,  liable  to  an  indefinite  series  of  postponements  : 
Sinn  Fein  by  a  week's  rebellion  secures  that  Home  Rule 
shall  be  brought  into  force  at  once." 

In  truth,  the  rapid  growth  of  Sinn  Fein  from  May  1916 
onwards  is  due  largely  to  this  reasoning  ;  but  also  to 
resentment  against  the  Government's  dealing  with  the 
rebellion,  and  against  the  Irish  party's  silence  in  Parlia- 
ment in  spite  of  the  numerous  actions  of  the  military 
power  which  called  for  vigorous  criticism. 

Irish  Nationalist  members  realized  the  unpopularity 
of  their  silence  and  submitted  to  it,  for  the  negotiations 
appeared  to  offer  a  real  chance.  We  held  that  Mr.  Lloyd 
George  could  not  afford  to  fail,  and  had  power  enough 
to  carry  through  a  settlement.     We  did  not  know,  and 


THE  REBELLION   AND  ITS  SEQUEL       233 

could  not,  that  the  Minister  of  Munitions  had  been  called 
off  from  his  regular  work  within  five  weeks  before  the 
beginning  of  the  offensive  on  the  Sonime,  for  which  an 
unprecedented  outlay  of  material  had  been  undertaken. 

The  negotiations  proceeded,  and  were  conducted  on 
the  principle  of  discussion  through  a  go-between.  The 
parties  never  met  :  Mr.  Lloyd  George  submitted  pro- 
posals to  each  side  separately.  Redmond  and  his  col- 
leagues insisted  on  2>rotecting  themselves  by  securing  a 
written  document,  so  that,  as  it  was  hoped,  there  could 
be  no  understanding  and  the  terms  come  to  would  be 
final. 

Those  of  us  who  hoped  for  a  completely  new  approach 
to  the  problem  were  doomed  to  disappointment.  The 
affair  was  taken  up  where  the  Buckingham  Palace  Con- 
ference left  it.  The  terms  to  be  arranged  were  terms 
of  exclusion  for  LHster  ;  and  the  two  questions  of  defining 
the  area  and  the  period  met  the  negotiators  on  the 
threshold. 

It  has  been  shown  above  that  Redmond  regarded  as 
vital  the  distinction  between  temporary  and  permanent 
exclusion.  His  purpose  was  to  stamp  the  whole  of  this 
proposed  agreement  with  a  provisional  and  transient 
character.  It  was  to  be  simply  a  war  measure,  subject 
to  re-arrangement  at  the  close  of  hostilities  ;  and  it  was 
to  be  adapted  to  a  community  still  agitated  by  rebellion. 

An  Irish  Parliament  with  an  Executive  responsible  to 
it  was  to  be  set  up  at  once.  But  no  elections  were  to 
be  held.  The  existing  members  for  the  existing  con- 
stituencies were  to  be  the  provisional  Parliament  till  the 
war  ended. 

The  same  considerations  precluded  the  possibility  of 
a  referendum  in  Ulster.  Nationalists  accepted  an  area 
defined  by  agreement.  It  left  out  of  "  Ulster "  the 
three  counties,  Donegal,  Cavan  and  Monaghan,  in  whose 
eight  constituencies  no  Unionist  had  been  returned  since 
1885.    But  it  left  to  the  excluded  area  the  counties  of 


234  JOHN  REDMOND'S  Lx\ST  YEARS 

Tyrone  and  Fermanagh,  each  with  a  Nationalist  majority, 
and  the  boroughs  of  Newry  and  Londonderry,  both 
represented  by  Home  Rulers. 

This  was  a  provision  which  no  body  of  men  could  be 
e::ipected  to  acquiesce  in  permanently  as  representing 
the  equity  of  the  case.  It  was  accepted  for  the  sake 
of  peace,  as  a  temporary  expedient.  A  strong  induce- 
ment was  added  by  Mr.  Lloyd  George's  proposal  that 
at  the  close  of  the  provisional  period  the  whole  matter 
should  be  referred  to  a  Council  of  the  Empire  with  the 
Prime  Ministers  of  the  Dominions  taking  a  hand  in  the 
settlement.  But  to  guarantee  and  seal  its  provisional 
and  transitory  character  an  extraordinary  clause  was 
added.  Until  a  permanent  settlement  was  reached,  the 
Irish  membership  at  Westminster  was  to  remain  at  its 
original  number  of  103. 

The  document  embodjang  these  conclusions  was  accepted 
in  identical  terms  by  each  side,  and  each  party  of  nego- 
tiators set  out  for  Ireland  to  endeavour  to  secure  accept- 
ance of  it.  But  before  he  left  London  Sir  Edward  Carson 
asked  for  an  interpretation  of  the  terms.  Did  the  agree- 
ment mean  that  none  of  the  six  excluded  counties  could 
be  brought  under  a  Dublin  Parliament  without  an  Act 
of  Parliament  ?  In  other  words,  was  the  exclusion 
permanent  until  Parliament  should  otherwise  determine  ? 
He  was  answered  that  the  Prime  Minister  accepted  this 
interpretation,  and  would  be  prepared  to  t^ay  so  when 
the  matter  came  before  Parliament.  Knowledge  of 
these  communications  was  not  conveyed  to  Redmond. 
Redmond's  interpretation  was  that  at  the  termination 
of  the  war  this  arrangement  lapsed,  and  the  Home  Rule 
Act,  which  was  the  law  of  the  land,  came  into  force.  If 
Ulster,  or  any  part  of  it,  were  to  bo  excluded,  it  must  be 
by  a  new  amending  Act.  Had  the  assurance  given  to 
Sir  Edward  Carson  been  conveyed  to  Redmond,  either 
the  negotiations  must  have  been  resumed  or  they  must 
have  been  rendered  abortive. 


THE   REBELLION  AND  ITS  SEQUEL       235 

On  June  13tli  the  Ulster  Council  accepted  the  terms, 
no  doubt  with  great  reluctance.  The  signatories  to  the 
Covenant  in  the  three  western  counties  felt  themselves 
betrayed.  The  whole  body  found  itself  committed  to 
acceptance  of  Home  Rule  in  principle  for  twenty-six 
counties.  But  the  war  necessity  was  pressed  upon  them 
and  they  submitted. 

The  Nationalist  Convention  met  ten  days  later  in 
Belfast.  Mr.  Devlin  had  been  strenuous  in  his  exertions 
throughout  the  province,  but  the  whole  force  of  the 
ecclesiastical  power  was  thrown  against  him.  Apart 
from  the  detestation  of  partition,  the  Catholic  Church 
conceived  that  the  principle  of  denominational  education 
would  be  lost  in  the  severed  counties,  where  the  dominant 
Presbyterian  element  was  oi^posed  to  it.  Very  many 
delegates  came  to  the  Convention  pledged  in  advance 
to  resist  the  proposals  :  and  the  general  anticipation 
was  that  Redmond  would  be  thrown  over. 

The  proceedings  were  secret.  But  in  the  result  the 
Nationalists  of  the  North  refused  to  be  any  party  to 
denying  the  rest  of  Ireland  self-government.  A  division 
was  taken,  and  consent  to  temporary  exclusion  was  carried 
by  a  large  majority.  The  victory  was  in  the  main  due 
to  Mr.  Devlin's  extraordinary  personal  gifts,  exercised 
to  carry  a  conclusion  which  inevitably  must  injure  himself 
where  he  was  most  sensitive  to  a  wound,  in  the  hearts 
of  those  among  whom  he  was  born  and  bred. 

It  must  have  been  in  the  weeks  immediately  after 
this  that  Redmond  spoke  to  me,  as  I  never  heard  him 
speak  of  any  other  man,  his  mind  about  Mr.  Devlin. 
"  Joe's  loyalty  in  all  this  business  has  been  beyond  words,' 
he  said,  "  I  know  what  it  has  cost  him  to  do  as  he  has 
done."  He  knew  well  that  the  younger  man's  influence 
had  been  more  efficacious  than  the  threat  of  his  own 
resignation — which  was  not  withheld.  A  man  of  other 
nature  might  have  been  jealous  of  the  young  and  growing 
power  :    but  such  an  element  as  this  was  so  foreign  to 


236  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

Redmond's  whole  being  that  even  the  thought  of  it 
never  entered  the  most  suspicious  mind. 

The  result  of  the  Belfast  Convention  was  communi- 
cated and  discussed  at  a  meeting  of  the  Irish  party  held 
at  the  Mansion  House  on  June  26th,  It  was  one  of  the 
most  hopeful  moments  in  our  experience  ;  reaction  from 
a  depression  approaching  to  despair  gave  confidence  to 
the  gloomiest  among  us.  Hope  was  in  the  air.  The 
effect  of  Mr.  Asquith's  sentence  upon  the  whole  machinery 
of  Dublin  Castle  had  not  yet  worn  off.  No  new  Govern- 
ment had  been  installed  :  the  Chief  Secretarj'^ship  re- 
mained vacant,  the  Lord-Lieutenant  also  had  retired 
from  his  office.  It  seemed  a  certainty  that  we  should 
enter,  under  whatever  auguries,  into  the  realization  of 
a  self-governing  Ireland.  Even  those  who  were  most 
enthusiastic  for  the  birth  of  a  new  and  glorious  era  that 
was  to  date  from  the  stirring  action  of  the  rebels,  and 
who  were  most  open-mouthed  in  condemnation  of  Red- 
mond's futile  efforts,  in  practice  shared  our  view.  I 
asked  one  such  man  how  he  counted  on  securing  the 
necessary  first  step  of  establishing  an  Irish  Government. 
"  Oh,  I  suppose,'  was  his  answer,  "  the  Irish  party  will 
manage  that  somehow." 

But  soon  delay  began  to  hang  coldly  on  this  temper 
of  anticipation,  and  to  delay  were  added  disquieting 
utterances.  On  June  29th  Lord  Lansdowne  announced 
in  the  House  of  Lords  that  the  "  consultations  "  which 
had  been  taking  place  were  "  certainly  authorized  "  bj^ 
the  Government  but  were  not  binding  upon  it ;  and  that 
he,  speaking  for  the  Unionist  wing  of  the  Cabinet,  had 
not  accepted  the  proposals.  This  was  disturbing.  Lord 
Selborne  had  retired  from  the  Government  before  the 
negotiators  went  to  Ireland,  because  he  knew  of  the 
proposals  and  was  not  prepared  to  sanction  them.  We 
assumed  that  other  Unionists  who  shared  this  view  would 
have  followed  him  in  his  frank  action.  Now  we  perceived 
that  Lord  Lansdowne  and  his  friends  had  frugally  hus- 


THE   REBELLION   AND  ITS   SEQUEL       237 

banded  their  force.  It  was  expected  by  many  that 
Ireland  would  do  the  work  for  tliem.  Failing  that,  they 
had  still  the  last  stab  to  deliver.  But  we  counted  upon 
one  thing  :  that  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  if  not  Mr.  Asquith, 
would  feel  himself  committed  to  see  the  deal  through — 
and  that  his  resignation  would  have  to  be  faced  as  a 
part  of  the  consequences  if  attcmj)ts  were  made  to  go 
back  on  the  bargain. 

Parliament  reassembled  and  still  nothing  was  said 
and  nothing  done  :  but  the  Press  was  full  of  rumours. 
On  July  19tli  Redmond  asked  that  a  date  should  be 
fixed  for  the  introduction  of  the  proposed  Bill,  and  next 
day  he  renewed  his  demand,  urging  that  the  constant 
delays  and  postponements  were  "  seriouslj^  jeopardizing 
the  chance  of  settlement."  This  was  only  too  true.  A 
furious  agitation  against  the  proposal  of  even  temporary 
partition  was  raging  through  Ireland.  Once  more,  the 
tide  had  been  missed  :  time  had  been  given  to  inculcate 
all  manner  of  doubts  and  suspicions — and  once  more 
the  suspicions  i)roved  to  be  only  too  well  justified.  The 
whole  story  was  revealed  to  the  House  on  July  24th. 

Redmond,  in  his  speech,  emphasized  it  that  the  pro- 
posals had  come  not  from  the  Nationalists,  but  from 
the  Government ;  they  had,  however,  been  accepted, 
after  considerable  negotiation  and  many  changes  in 
substance,  as  a  plan  which  Nationalists  could  recommend 
for  acceptance.  Nationalists  had  been  pressed  to  use 
the  utmost  despatch,  had  been  told  that  every  hour 
counted  and  that  it  was  essential  in  the  highest  Imperial 
interests,  if  Ireland  endorsed  the  agreement,  that  it 
should  be  put  into  operation  at  once.  "  That  is  two 
long  months  ago,"  he  said.  Action  had  been  taken  ; 
the  unpopularity  of  the  proposals,  fully  foreseen,  had 
been  faced,   on  a  clear  understanding. 

"  The  agreement  was  in  the  words  of  the  Prime 
Minister  himself,  for  what  he  called  a  provisional  settle- 
ment which  should  last  until  the  war  was  over,  or  until 


238  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

a  final  and  permanent  settlement  was  arrived  at  within 
a  limited  period  after  the  war.  This  was  the  chief  factor 
of  this  plan,  and  without  it  not  one  of  my  colleagues  or 
myself  would  for  a  moment  have  considered  it,  much  less 
have  submitted  it  to  our  followers." 

The  retention  of  Irish  members  at  Westminster  in  full 
strength  was  covenanted  for  "  as  an  indispensable  safeguard 
of  the  temporary  character  of  the  whole  arrangement." 

It  was  on  this  construction  of  the  agreement  that 
consent  to  it  had  been  secured,  in  the  face  of  very  strong 
and  organized  opposition  :  and  consent  was  secured  to 
it  as  a  final  document.  Nevertheless,  when  Redmond 
arrived  in  London  he  had  been  at  once  confronted  with 
a  demand  for  modifications — of  which  the  first  were 
unimportant.  Yet  to  consent  to  any  alteration  was  a 
sacrifice  of  principle  ;  but  he  was  told  that  this  concession 
would  secure  agreement  in  the  Cabinet.  Later,  however, 
came  a  public  statement  from  Lord  Lansdowne  that 
"  permanent  and  enduring  "  structural  alterations  would 
be  introduced  into  the  Home  Rule  Act.  Redmond  had 
seen  the  draft  Bill  in  which  the  Government's  draftsmen 
embodied  the  terms  of  the  agreement,  and  he  had 
accepted  this,  as  conforming  to  his  covenant.  In  reply 
to  Lord  Lansdowne,  he  had  pressed  for  the  production 
of  this  Bill,  but  could  not  get  it.  The  end  was  that,  after 
a  Cabinet  held  on  July  19th,  he  was  told  that  "  a  number 
of  new  proposals  had  been  brought  forward  "  ;  that  the 
Cabinet  did  not  desire  to  consult  him  about  these  at 
all ;  and  on  the  22nd  Mr.  Lloyd  George  and  Mr.  Herbert 
Samuel  were  instructed  to  convey  to  him  the  Cabinet's 
decision,  with  an  intimation  that  there  would  be  no 
further  discussion  or  consultation.  That  decision  was 
to  make  the  exclusion  of  six  counties  permanent,  and 
to  withdraw  the  provision  for  retaining  Irish  members 
at  full  strength  during  the  transitory  period. 

Redmond  attacked  no  individual.  His  anger  was 
beyond  words.     He  said  this,  however ; 


THE   REBELLION  AND  ITS  SEQUEL       239 

"  Some  tragic  fatcality  seems  to  clog  the  footsteps  of 
this  Government  in  all  their  dealings  with  Ireland.  Every 
step  taken  by  them  since  the  Coalition  was  formed,  and 
especially  since  the  unfortunate  outbreak  in  Dublin,  has 
been  lamentable.  They  have  disregarded  every  advice 
we  tendered  to  them,  and  now  in  the  end,  having  got 
us  to  induce  our  people  to  make  a  tremendous  sacrifice 
and  to  agree  to  the  temporary  exclusion  of  these  Ulster 
counties,  they  throw  this  agreement  to  the  winds,  and  they 
have  taken  the  surest  means  to  accentuate  every  possible 
danger  and  difficulty  in  the  Irish  situation." 

That  day  really  finished  the  constitutional  party  and 
overthrew  Redmond's  power.  We  had  incurred  the 
very  great  odium  of  accepting  even  temporary  partition 
— and  a  partition  which,  owing  to  this  arbitrary  extension 
of  area,  could  not  be  justified  on  any  ground  of  principle  ; 
we  had  involved  with  us  many  men  who  voted  for  that 
acceptance  on  the  faith  of  Redmond's  assurance  that 
the  Government  were  bound  by  their  written  word ; 
and  now  we  were  thrown  over. 

Apart  from  the  effect  on  Redmond's  position,  the 
result  was  to  engender  in  Ireland  a  temper  which  made 
settlement  almost  impossible.  No  British  Minister's  word 
would  in  future  be  accepted  for  anything ;  and  any 
Irishman  who  attempted  to  improve  relations  between 
the  countries  was  certain  to  arouse  anger  and  contempt 
in  his  countrymen. 

More  particularly  the  relations  between  Irish  members 
and  the  most  powerful  members  of  the  Government  were 
hopelessly  embittered.  Mr.  Lloyd  George  put  aside 
completely — probably  he  never  for  a  moment  entertained 
— the  thought  of  seriously  threatening  resignation  because 
his  agreement  with  the  Irish  was  repudiated  by  his 
colleagues.  He  was  entirely  engrossed  with  the  work 
of  the  War  Office,  where  he  thought,  and  was  justified 
in  thinking,  himself  indispensable.  Mr.  Asquith,  whose 
object  was  to  keep  unity  in  his  Government  at  all  costs, 


240  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

when  it  came  to  a  choice  whether  to  quarrel  with  the  Irish 
who  formed  no  part  of  it,  or  with  the  Unionists  who  were 
his  colleagues,  had  no  hesitation  which  side  to  throw  over. 

I  have  never  seen  the  House  of  Commons  so  thoroughly 
discontented  and  disgusted.  There  was  much  genuine 
sympathy  with  Redmond.  Sir  Edward  Carson  evidently 
shared  it,  and  he  made  a  conciliatory  speech  in  which 
he  proposed  that  he  and  the  Nationalist  leader  should 
shake  hands  on  the  floor  of  the  House.  That  is  a  gesture 
which  comes  better  from  the  loser  than  from  the  winner, 
and  there  was  no  doubt  that  Sir  Edward  Carson  had  won. 
But  he  knew  Ireland  well  enough  to  realize  the  meaning 
of  his  victory,  and  his  speech  indicated  disquiet  and  even 
horror  at  the  prospect  before  us.  He  was  quite  avowedly 
anxious  to  see  a  start  made  with  Home  Rule,  Ulster 
standing  apart.  In  a  later  debate,  when  the  Govern- 
ment announced  its  intention  to  fill  again  the  vacant 
Irish  offices  (appointing  Mr.  Duke  as  Chief  Secretary), 
Redmond  referred  hopefully  to  this  utterance  of  the 
Ulster  leader  and  generally  to  "  the  new  and  improved 
atmosphere  which  has  surrounded  this  Irish  question 
quite  recently." 

The  end  of  this  speech  dealt  with  one  of  the  elements 
which  had  contributed  most  to  the  improvement.  In 
the  great  battle  of  the  Somme,  which  opened  on  July  1st, 
the  Ulster  Division  went  for  the  first  time  into  general 
action,  and  their  achievement  was  the  most  glorious  and 
the  most  unlucky  of  that  day.  They  carried  their  assault 
through  five  lines  of  trenches,  and,  because  a  division  on 
their  flank  was  not  equally  successful,  were  obliged  to 
fall  back,  adding  terribly  in  this  withdrawal  to  the 
desperate  losses  of  their  advance.  Side  by  side  with 
them  on  the  other  flank  was  the  Fourth  Division,  contain- 
ing two  battalions  of  Dublin  Fusiliers,  in  one  of  which 
John  Redmond's  son  commanded  a  company  ;  so  that  he 
and  the  Ulstermen  went  over  shoulder  to  shoulder.  He 
came  back  unwounded  ;   all  other  company  commanders 


THE  REBELLION  AND  ITS  SEQUEL       241 

in  the  battalion  wore  killed.  The  only  thing  in  which 
Redmond  was  entirely  fortunate  during  these  last  years 
of  his  life  was  in  his  son's  record  during  the  war. 

Another  Nationalist  well  known  to  the  House  of  Com- 
mons served  also  in  the  Dublin  Fusiliers  on  the  Somme, 
with  a  different  fortune.  Professor  Kettle,  owing  to  con- 
ditions of  health,  had  been  unable  to  come  to  France  with 
the  Sixteenth  Division,  and  had  been  mainly  employed 
in  recruiting.  Now  in  these  summer  months  he  pushed 
hard  to  get  out  to  France,  though  he  was  not  physically 
fit  for  the  line.  He  got  to  France,  and,  as  was  e'dny  to 
foresee,  broke  down  and  was  sent  to  work  at  the  base 
on  records  :  but  before  he  left  his  regiment  he  knew 
that  it  was  under  orders  for  a  general  action,  and  he 
insisted  that  he  should  have  leave  to  rejoin  for  that  day. 
He  came  back  accordingly,  found  himself  called  on  to 
take  command  of  a  compan}',  and  led  it  with  great 
gallantry,  and  on  the  second  day  of  action  was  shot  dead. 
It  was  the  fate  that  he  expected  ;  he,  like  so  many,  had 
a  forerunning  assurance  of  his  end.  So  was  lost  to 
Ireland  the  most  variously-gifted  intelligence  that  I 
have   ever  known. 

The  Sixteenth  Division  were  still  on  the  sector  about 
Loos,  and  their  casualties  were  heavy  and  continuous  in 
the  perpetual  trench  warfare.  With  the  last  dajs  of 
August  they  were  withdrawn — for  a  rest,  as  they  believed 
at  first  ;  but  their  march  was  southwards  to  the  Somme. 

The  purjjose  was  to  use  them  for  an  attack  on  Ginchy  ; 
but  a  shift  of  arrangements  brought  the  47th  Brigade 
into  line  against  Guillemont  and  its  quarries,  which  had 
on  six  occasions  been  unsuccessfully  attacked.  The  Irish 
carried  them.  Three  days  later  the  whole  division  was 
launched  against  Ginchy.  They  equalled  the  Ulstermen's 
valour,  and  were  luckier  in  the  result.  For  these  achieve- 
ments praise  was  not  stinted.  Colonel  Repington  in 
The  Times  described  the  Irish  as  the  ''  best  missile  troops  " 
in  all  the  armies. 

17 


242  JOHJS^   REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 


III 

The  deeds  of  Irish  soldiers  helped  us  greatly  outside 
of  Ireland  ;  in  Ireland,  the  news  was  received  with  mingled 
feelings.  There  was  passionate  resentment  against  the 
Government,  and  the  question  was  asked,  For  what  were 
their  men  dying  ?  Redmond's  answer  could  not  be  so 
confident  as  it  would  have  been  six  months  earlier.  There 
were  many  who  said  that  he  dare  not  face  the  country. 
His  answer  to  this  was  given  at  Waterford,  where  on 
October  C,  191(5,  his  constituents  received  him  with  their 
old  loyalty — though  now  for  the  first  time  there  were 
hostile  voices  in  the  crowd.  He  spoke  out  very  plainly, 
saying  with  justice  that  in  all  his  life  he  had  never  played 
to  the  gallery  and  would  not  now.  Things  had  to  be 
looked  at  squarely. 

"  We  have  taken  a  leap  back  over  generations  of  pro- 
gress, and  have  actuall}'  had  a  rebellion,  with  its  inevitable 
aftermath  of  brutalities,  stupidities  and  inflamed  passions." 

He  would  impugn  no  man's  motives,  least  of  all  the 
motives  of  the  dead  ;  but  those  who  had  set  this  train 
of  events  in  motion  had  been  always  the  enemies  of  the 
constitutional  movement.  The  constitutional  movement 
must  go  on,  he  said ;  but  it  would  be  follj''  to  pretend 
that  it  could  go  on  as  if  nothing  had  happened.  Ireland 
must  face  its  share  in  the  responsibility.  But  the  real 
responsibility  rested  with  the  British  Government. 

To  establish  this  he  entered  on  a  review  of  the  whole 
series  of  circumstances,  not  omitting  Ulster's  preparations 
for  civil  war,  and  stressing  heavily  the  mischief  that  was 
done  when  Sir  Edward  Carson  %\as  chosen  "  by  strange 
irony  "  to  be  the  First  Law  Officer  of  the  Crown. 

Passing  from  his  review,  he  issued  grave  warning  against 
the  idea  of  conscription  :  it  would  be  resisted  in  every 
village  and  its  attempted  enforcement  would  be  a  scandal 
which  would  ring  through  the  world.     For  Ireland  also 


THE  REBELLION  AND  ITS  SEQUEL       243 

he  had  admonition.  He  had  told  them  before  that  Home 
Rule  was  an  impregnable  position.  But  "  no  fortress  is 
impregnable  unless  the  garrison  is  faithful  and  united." 

This,  alas  !  was  already  a  counsel  of  perfection  for  a 
country  so  deeply  d:vided  in  opinion  as  Nationalist 
Ireland  had  come  to  be.  The  old  loyalties  had  gone — 
and  he  felt  it.  Ending  on  a  personal  note,  he  referred 
to  his  age  :  he  was  over  sixty  ;  he  had  done  thirty-five 
years  of  work  which  would  have  broken  down  any  man 
less  robust  in  constitution  than  it  had  been  his  luck  to 
bo  born.  Ho  believed  in  youth,  he  said,  and  would 
gladly  give  way  to  younger  men. 

"But  one  thing  I  will  not  do  while  I  have  breath  in 
my  body.  I  will  not  give  way  to  the  abuse  and  calumny 
and  the  falsehoods  of  men  whom  I  have  known  for  long 
years  as  the  treacherous  enemies  of  Ireland." 

With  all  his  reticence,  he  was  a  sensitive  man  ;  and  for 
months  now  he  could  scarcelj'^  take  up  a  newspaper, 
except  his  party's  official  organ,  without  finding  himself 
accused  of  imbecility,  of  idle  vanity,  of  corrupt  bargaining, 
of  everj'^  unworthy  motive.  Worse  than  all,  he  realized 
the  inherent  weakness  of  his  position.  He  told  his  hearers 
at  Waterford  that  the  Irish  party  would  not  vary  its 
attitude  upon  the  war,  but  that  we  should  now  become 
a  regular  and  active  opposition.  He  was  far  too  experi- 
enced not  to  be  aware  that  during  a  war — and  such  a 
war — he  neither  could  nor  would  offer  to  the  Govern- 
ment in  power  opposition  in  the  sense  in  which  Nationalist 
Ireland  would  understand  the  word. 

But  he  took  steps  at  once  for  raising  the  Irish  question 
by  a  direct  vote  of  censure.     On  October  18th  he  moved  : 

'*  That  the  system  of  Government  at  present  main- 
tained in  Ireland  is  inconsistent  with  the  principles  for 
which  the  Allies  are  fighting  in  Europe,  and  has  been 
mainly  responsible  for  the  recent  unhappy  events  and 
for  the  present  state  of  feeling  in  that  country." 

His  speech  avoided  all  controversial  reference  to  what 


244  JOHN   REDMOND'S   LAST   YEARS 

had  preceded  the  war,  but  it  reviewed  with  great  power 
the  long  series  of  bhinders,  beginning  with  the  delay  in 
putting  the  Home  Rule  Bill  on  the  Statute  Book,  and 
ending  with  the  Cabinet's  destruction  of  the  agreement 
entered  into  in  June.  Now,  as  the  end  of  all,  Dublin 
Castle,  after  the  Prime  Minister's  description  of  its  hope- 
less breakdown,  was  set  up  again  with  a  Unionist  Chief 
Secretary  and  a  Unionist  Attorney-General ;  with  a 
universal  system  of  martial  law  in  force  throughout  the 
country,  and  with  hundreds  of  interned  men  in  prison 
on  suspicion.  He  warned  the  Government  of  the  in- 
evitable effect  upon  the  flow  of  recruits  for  the  Irish 
Divisions  ;  and  in  a  passage  which  showed  how  close  his 
attention  was  to  all  this  matter  of  recruitment,  he  pressed 
the  War  0£&ce  for  certain  minor  concessions  to  Irish 
sentiment  which  would  help  us  to  maintain  the  Division 
that  had  so  greatlj'^  distinguished  itself  at  Guillemont 
and  Ginchy. 

But  the  real  pith  of  his  speech  was  political  in  the 
larger  sense.  He  pressed  upon  the  House  the  injurj' 
which  England's  interest  was  suffering  through  the  aliena- 
tion of  American  opinion,  and  through  the  reflection  of 
Irish  discontent  in  Australia  ;  he  pleaded  for  the  with- 
drawal of  martial  law.  Nothing  came  of  the  debate, 
except  a  speech  in  which  Mr.  Lloyd  George  admitted 
the  "  stupidities,  which  sometimes  almost  look  like 
malignancy,"  that  were  perpetrated  at  the  beginning  of 
recruiting  in  Ireland.  The  Labour  men  and  a  few  Liberals 
voted  for  our  motion.  But  as  a  menace  to  the  Govern- 
ment it  was  negligible. 

I  was  in  France  during  the  period  of  intrigue  which 
followed,  leading  up  to  the  displacement  of  Mr.  Asquith. 
VV^hen  the  change  occurred,  members  of  ParHament  who 
were  serving  were  recalled  by  special  summons.  I  found 
Redmond  in  these  days  profoundly  impressed  with  the 
strength  of  Mr,  Lloyd  George's  personal  position.  He 
was    convinced  that  the  new  Premier  could,  if  he  chose, 


THE   REBELLION   AND  ITS  SEQUEL       245 

force  a  settlement  of  the  Irish  diflficulty,  and  was  very 
hopeful  of  this  happening.  Sir  Edward  Carson  dared  not, 
he  thought,  set  himself  in  opposition  ;  at  this  moment 
the  Ulster  party  was  not  popular,  while  there  M-as  in 
the  House  a  widespread  feeling  that  Redmond  in  par- 
ticular had  been  treated  in  a  manner  far  other  than 
his  due.  Another  of  his  brother's  interventions  in  debate 
gave  an  impetus  to  this  sj-mpathy. 

Again  in  a  thin  House,  during  some  discussion  on 
Estimates,  Willie  Redmond  got  up  and  spoke  out  of  the 
fullness  of  experiences  which  had  profoundly  affected 
his  imagination.  He  told  the  House  of  what  he  had 
seen  in  Flanders,  where  the  two  Irish  Divisions  had  at 
last  been  brought  into  contact,  so  that  the  left  of  the 
Ulster  line  in  front  of  Ploegstreet  touched  the  right  of 
ours  in  front  of  Kemmel.  It  had  always  been  said  that 
the  two  factions  would  fly  at  each  other's  throats  :  by 
a  score  of  happj'  detailed  touches  the  soldier  built  up 
a  jDicture  of  what  had  actually  happened  in  the  line  and 
behind  the  line,  and  then  summed  it  up  in  a  conclusion  : 

"  They  came  together  in  the  trenches  and  they  were 
friends.  Get  them  together  on  the  floor  of  an  Assembly,  or 
where  you  will,  in  Ireland,  and  a  similar  result  will  follow." 

Then,  from  this  theme,  he  passed  to  one  even  more 
moving — the  fate  of  Irish  Nationalists,  who  were  con- 
fronted daily  with  evil  news  of  their  own  land.  "'  It  is 
miserable  to  see  men  who  went  out  with  high  hearts  and 
hopes,  who  have  acquitted  themselves  so  well,  filled 
with  wretchedness  because  their  country  is  in  an  unhapjDy 
condition."  He  appealed  for  a  new  and  genuine  attempt 
to  set  all  this  right  ;  and  he  eulogized  once  more  \vith 
warm  eloquence  the  conduct  of  the  troops,  Ulstermen 
and  the  rest  alike.  Raw  lads,  who  eighteen  months  before 
had  never  thought  of  seeing  war,  had  come  in  before 
his  eyes  bringing  prisoners  by  the  hundreds  from  the 
most  highly  trained  soldiery  in  Euroi^e. 

Man  after  man,  when  Willie  Redmond  had  ended,  rose 


246  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

and  thanked  him  ;  but  the  most  notable  words  came 
from  Mr.  Bonar  Law : 

"  His  name  and  his  action,  in  connection  with  that 
of  the  leader  of  his  party,  stand  out  as  a  landmark  for 
all  the  people  of  this  country  as  to  what  is  being  done 
by  those  who  represent  Nationalist  feeling." 

All  this  increased  Redmond's  hopes  of  what  might  be 
expected  from  the  new  Premier,  the  representative  of 
another  small  nationality,  whose  early  days  in  Parliament 
had  linked  him  almost  more  closely  with  Irish  Nationalists 
than  with  British  Liberalism.  I  was  on  the  upper  bench 
when  Mr.  Lloyd  George  came  in,  amid  loud  cheering. 
"  Look  at  him,"  said  Willie  Redmond  (his  senior  in  the 
House  by  ten  years),  who  sat  beside  me  :  "  It  seems 
only  the  other  day  he  was  sitting  over  here  cheering  like 
mad  for  the  Boers  ;  and  there  he  is  now,  Prime  Minister." 

But  Mr.  Lloyd  George's  speech,  which  had  been  deferred 
for  several  days  owing  to  illness,  was  long  before  it  came 
to  Ireland,  and  then  its  tone  was  no  way  hopeful.  He 
referred  back  to  the  negotiations  of  June  and  July,  with 
their  *'  atmosphere  of  nervous  suspicion  and  distrust, 
pervasive,  universal,  of  everything  and  everybody." 

**  I  was  drenched  with  suspicion  of  Irishmen  by  English- 
men and  of  Englishmen  by  Irishmen  and,  worst  of  all, 
of  Irishmen  by  Irishmen.  It  was  a  quagmire  of  distrust 
which  clogged  the  footsteps  and  made  progress  impossible. 
That  is  the  real  enemy  of  Ireland." 

No  one  could  say  that  the  transaction  to  which  Mr. 
Lloyd  George  was  referring  had  helped  to  destroy  dis- 
trust :  and  in  view  of  the  opinion  held  by  Irishmen — 
and  not  by  Irishmen  only — of  Ministers'  dealing  with 
Ireland,  it  was  natural  that  this  passage  should  provoke 
the  resentment  which  was  evident  in  Redmond  when 
he  rose. 

He  followed  Mr.  Asquith,  and  made  it  clear  that 
Ireland  did  not  keep  its  praises  for  the  rising  star.  He 
commended  in  weighty  words  the  patriotism,  the  reticence 


THE  REBELLION  AND  ITS  SEQUEL       247 

and  tho  magnani)nity  of  the  dispossessed  leader ;  ho 
renewed  Ireland's  expression  of  gratitude  for  the  service 
done  in  the  Home  Rule  Act ;  then,  turning  to  the  new 
power,  he  told  ]\Ir.  Lloyd  George  bluntly  that  his  words 
would  be  received  in  Ireland  with  the  deepest  disappoint- 
ment. This  was  to  be  a  Ministry  of  quick  and  effective 
decisions  ;  but  so  far  as  our  question  was  concerned, 
they  had  shown  every  disj)osition  to  wait  and  see.  Was 
Ireland  only  to  be  let  drift  ?  Two  courses  might  be 
taken — the  statesman's,  of  real  remedy ;  the  politician's, 
of  palliatives.  Even  of  the  latter  nothing  had  been 
said.  Martial  law  could  be  removed  ;  untried  men  could 
be  released  from  jail.  Yet  there  was  no  sign.  The 
Prime  Minister  intervened  angrily.  He  had  been  ill, 
he  said.  Redmond  was  in  no  way  inclined  to  accept 
the  reason  as  sufficient,  and  again  Mr.  Lloyd  George 
rose  to  say  that  it  was  "  not  merely  unfair,  but  a  trifle 
impolitic  "  not  to  give  him  a  couple  of  days  to  consult 
with  the  Chief  Secretary'-. 

Still  Redmond  maintained  his  tone  of  aggression. 
A  radical  reform  was  needed,  and  of  those  things  that 
must  be  borne  in  mind  the  first  was  that  time  was 
of  the  essence  of  success.  Promi)tness  was  essential. 
Secondly,  Government  must  take  the  initiative  them- 
selves ;  they  must  not  seek  to  evade  their  'responsibility 
by  putting  the  blame  on  other  shoulders  (this  was  his 
rejoinder  to  the  allegation  of  paralysing  distrust)  ;  there 
was  no  use  in  resuming  negotiations,  going  to  this  man 
and  to  that  man  to  see  what  he  would  be  willing  to  take. 
Thirdly,  the  problem  must  be  approached  by  a  different 
method  ;  it  must  be  dealt  with  on  lines  of  a  united  Ire- 
land. The  time  had  gone  by,  in  effect,  for  anj'  proposals 
of  partition,  temporary  or  permanent. 

He  added  a  caution  that  there  must  be  no  attempt 
to  mix  up  the  problem  of  an  Irish  settlement  with  con- 
ditions about  recruiting  or  conscription.  "  That  question 
must  be  left  to  a  change  of  heart  in  Ireland."    In  con- 


248  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

elusion  he  expressed  to  the  House  of  Commons — though 
in  no  sanguine  accents — what  he  had  expressed  to  me 
a  fortnight  earlier  in  private  talk  :  his  belief  that  the 
time  was  "  ripe  for  drastic,  decided  and  bold  action  " 
by  the  Prime  Minister.  Powerful  influences  were  at 
Mr.  Lloyd  George's  back — in  the  Press  of  all  j^arties, 
in  the  opinion  of  leading  men  of  all  parties.  Three- 
quarters  of  the  House  of  Commons,  Redmond  said,  would 
M'elcome  such  action  :  the  whole  of  the  overseas  Dominions 
would  be  for  it  ;  and  it  would  have  "  the  sympathy 
of  all  men  of  good  will  in  the  Empire." 

For  the  first  time  I  noticed  lack  of  cordiality  in  the 
response  of  the  House — not  from  want  of  agreement, 
but  from  a  profound  depression.  The  old  temper  of 
bickering  had  revived,  especiallj^  between  some  of  our 
partj'  and  those  who  disagreed  with  them.  One  was 
glad  to  get  back  to  France  for  Christmas,  even  in  that 
grim  winter. 

When  I  was  invalided  back  in  February,  I  found  that 
things  had  not  stood  still  in  Ireland.  Redmond's  sug- 
gested palliative  had  been  applied,  and  the  deported 
persons  were  let  back  home  for  Christmas.  But  this 
produced  little  easing  of  the  situation,  and  within  a  few 
weeks  Government  rearrested  several  of  them. 

One,  however.  Count  Plunkett,  was  still  in  Ireland 
when  a  vacancy  occurred  in  Roscommon.  He  was  not 
in  himself  a  likely  man  to  appeal  to  that  constituency. 
He  had  been  an  applicant  for  the  Under-Secretaryship 
at  Dublin  Castle,  and  was  therefore  clearlj^  not  a  person 
of  extreme  Nationalist  views.  But  one  of  his  sons,  a 
young  poet,  had  been  among  the  signatories  to  the  pro- 
clamation of  an  Irish  Republic,  and  had  paid  for  it  with 
his  life  ;  Count  Plunkett  stood  really  as  the  father  of 
his  son.  He  was  returned  by  a  very  large  majority. 
This  was  the  first  open  defeat  inflicted  by  the  jDhysical 
force  men  on  the  Constitutional  party  since  the  beginning 
of  Parnell's  day. 


THE  REBELLION  AND  ITS  SEQUEL       249 

In  March,  Redmond  desired  to  bring  the  Irish  question 
again  before  Parliament,  and  Mr.  T.  P.  O'Connor  intro- 
duced a  motion  calling  on  the  House  "  without  further 
delay  to  confer  upon  Ireland  the  free  institutions  long 
promised  her." 

That  debate  will  always  be  remembered  by  those 
who  heard  it  for  one  speech.  Willie  Redmond  was  among 
the  oldest  members  of  the  Parliamentary  party  ;  not 
half  a  dozen  men  in  all  the  House  had  been  longer  con- 
tinuously members  ;  he  had  always  been  one  of  the 
most  popular  figures  at  Westminster  and  in  Ireland  ; 
and  he  had  always  siaoken  a  great  deal.  Yet  he  had 
never  been  in  the  front  rank  either  as  a  speaker  or  as 
a  politician.  The  humour  and  the  wit  which  made  him 
the  joy  of  groups  in  the  smoking-room  on  the  occasions 
when  he  was  in  full  vein  of  reminiscence  never  got  into 
his  set  speeches — though  no  man  oftener  lit  up  debate 
with  some  telling  interruption.  He  was  often  merely 
rhetorical ;  he  had  the  name — though  in  my  experience 
he  never  deserved  it — for  being  indiscreetly  vehement. 
His  early  reputation,  which  he  had  never  lived  down, 
is  not  unkindly  represented  by  a  story  which  he  used 
to  tell  against  himself.  When  the  first  Home  Rule  Bill 
was  introduced  he  had  a  great  desire  to  speak  in  the 
debate,  and  went  to  Parnell  with  his  request.  "  Will 
you  promise,"  said  Parnell,  "  that  you  will  write  out 
what  you  are  going  to  say,  and  show  it  to  me,  and  say 
that  and  no  more  ?  "  He  promised,  and  handed  in  his 
manuscript.  Days  went  by  and  he  heard  nothing,  so 
he  went  back  to  the  Chief.  "  Ah  yes,"  said  Parnell, 
"  I  have  it  in  my  pocket.  An  excellent  speech,  my  dear 
Willie.  If  I  were  you  I  shouldn't  waste  it  on  the  House 
of  Commons.     It's  too  good  for  them." 

Later,  in  the  days  from  1906  onwards,  with  all  his 
experience,  it  cannot  be  said  that  he  ever  affected  opinion 
in  the  House.  What  he  said  was  the  common  stuff  of 
argument :    it   was  all  what  someone  else   might  have 


2oO  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

said — until  the  war  came.  Then,  he  was  a  changed 
creature.  He  went  through  in  the  Army  the  same  experi- 
ence as  hundreds  of  other  members  of  Parliament ;  but 
he  and  he  only  seemed  to  have  got  the  very  soul  out 
of  it.  He  took  to  his  soldier's  duty  as  a  religion  :  he 
saw  all  that  concerned  him  in  the  light  of  it.  It  has 
been  told  already  how  his  two  speeches  on  almost  casual 
occasions  affected  public  feeling  :  but  in  them  he  was 
chieflj'  an  Irish  member  of  Parliament  speaking  about 
soldiers  and  about  Irish  soldiers.  In  this  debate  he  was 
an  Irish  soldier  pleading  with  Parliament  for  Ireland  in 
the  name  of  Irish  soldiers — who  had  responded  to  the 
call  to  arms  because,  as  he  said,  they  were  led  to  believe 
that  a  new  and  better  and  brighter  chapter  was  about 
to  open  in  the  relations  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland. 

"  I  do  not  believe  that  there  is  a  single  member  of 
any  part}'-  in  this  House  who  is  prepared  to  get  up  and 
say  that  in  the  past  the  government  and  treatment  of 
Ireland  by  Great  Britain  have  been  what  they  should 
have  been.  Mistakes,  dark,  black,  and  bitter  mistakes, 
have  been  made.  A  people  denied  justice,  a  people 
with  many  admitted  grievances,  the  redress  of  which 
has  been  long  delaj^ed.  On  our  side,  perhaps,  in  the 
conflict  and  in  the  bitterness  of  contest,  there  may  have 
been  things  said  and  done,  offensive  if  you  will,  irritating 
if  you  will,  to  the  people  of  this  country  ;  but  what  I 
want  to  ask,  in  all  simplicity,  is  this,  whether,  in  face 
of  the  tremendous  conflict  which  is  now  raging,  whether, 
in  view  of  the  fact  that,  apart  from  every  other  considera- 
tion, the  Irish  people,  South  as  well  as  North,  are  upon 
the  side  of  the  Allies  and  against  the  German  pretension 
to-day,  it  is  not  possible  from  this  war  to  make  a  new 
start  ? — whether  it  is  not  possible  on  your  side,  and  on 
ours  as  well,  to  let  the  dead  past  bury  its  dead,  and  to 
commence  a  brighter  and  a  newer  and  a  friendlier  era 
between  the  two  countries  ?  Why  cannot  we  do  it  ? 
Is   there   an   Englishman   representing   any   party   who 


THE  REBELLION  AND  ITS  SEQUEL       251 

does  not  yearn  for  a  better  future  between  Ireland  and 
Great  Britain  ?  There  is  no  Irishman  who  ia  not  anxious 
for  it  cilso.  Why  cannot  there  be  a  settlement  ?  Why 
must  it  be  that,  when  British  soldiers  and  Irish  soldiers 
are  suffering  and  dj4ng  side  by  side,  this  eternal  old 
quarrel  should  go  on  ?  ...  . 

*'  If  there  ought  to  be  an  oblivion  of  the  past  between 
Great  Britain  and  Ireland  generally,  may  I  ask  in  God's 
name  the  First  Lord  of  the  Admiralty  [Sir  Edward 
Carson]  why  there  cannot  be  a  similar  oblivion  of  the 
past  between  the  warring  sections  in  Ireland  ?  All  my 
life  I  have  taken  as  strong  and  as  strenuous  a  part  on 
the  Nationalist  side  as  my  poor  abilities  would  allow. 
I  may  have  been  as  bitter  and  as  strong  in  the  heated 
atmosphere  of  party  contests  against  my  countrymen 
in  the  North  as  ever  they  have  been  against  me,  but  I 
believe  in  my  soul  and  heart  here  to-day  that  I  represent 
the  instinct  and  the  desire  of  the  whole  Irish  Catholic  race 
when  I  say  that  there  is  nothing  that  they  more  passion- 
ately desire  and  long  for  than  that  there  should  be  an 
end  of  this  old  struggle  between  the  North  and  the  South. 

*'  The  followers  of  the  right  honourable  gentleman 
the  First  Lord  of  the  Admiralty  should  shake  hands 
with  the  rest  of  their  countrymen.  I  appeal  to  the  right 
honourable  gentleman  here  in  the  name  of  men  against 
whom  no  finger  of  scorn  can  be  pointed  ;  in  the  name  of 
men  who  are  doing  their  duty  ;  in  the  name  of  men  who 
have  died  ;  in  the  name  of  men  who  may  die,  and  who 
at  this  very  moment  may  be  dying,  to  rise  to  the  demands 
of  the  situation.  I  ask  him  to  meet  his  Nationalist 
fellow-countrymen  and  accept  the  offer  which  they  make 
to  him  and  his  followers,  and  on  the  basis  of  that  self- 
government  which  has  made,  and  which  alone  has  made, 
the  Empire  as  strong  as  it  is  to-day,  come  to  some  arrange- 
ment for  the  better  government  of  Ireland  in  the  future. 
"  Why  does  the  right  honourable  gentleman  opjjosite 
not  meet  us  half  way  ?     I  want  to  know  what  is  the 


252  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

reason.  It  surely  cannot  be  that  the  right  honourable 
gentleman  and  his  friends  believe  that  under  a  system 
of  self-government  they  would  have  anything  to  fear. 
Nothing  impressed  me  more  than  the  opinion  I  heard 
expressed  b}-  a  high-placed  Roman  Catholic  officer  who 
is  in  service  with  the  Ulster  Division,  when  he  told 
me  of  his  experience  there,  and  when  he  said  that 
although  he  was  the  only  one  of  the  Catholic  religion 
in  that  Division,  it  had  dawned  upon  him  that  they  cer- 
tainly were  Irishmen  and  were  not  Englishmen  or  Scots- 
men. ^  The  right  honourable  gentleman  knows  perfectly 
well  that  it  would  not  take  so  very  much  to  bring  his 
friends  and  our  friends  together,  and  I  ask  him  why 
the  attempt  is  not  made  ?  I  ask  him  whether  the  cir- 
cumstances of  the  time  do  not  warrant  that  such  an 
attempt  should  be  made  ?  I  ask  him  whether  he  does 
not  know  in  his  inmost  heart  that  it  would  bring  to  the 
common  enemy  more  dismay  and  consternation  than 
the  destruction  of  a  hundred  of  their  submarines  if  they 
knew  that  England,  Scotland  and  Ireland  were  really 
united,  not  merely  within  the  confines  of  the  shores  of 
these  islands,  but  united  in  every  part  of  the  world  where 
the  Irish  people  are  to  be  found  ? 

"  What  is  it  that  stands  in  the  way  of  Ireland  taking 
her  place  as  a  self-governing  part  of  this  Empire  ?  Ire- 
land is  the  only  portion  of  the  Empire  now  fighting  which 
is  not  self-governing.  The  Australians  whom  I  meet 
from  time  to  time  point  to  their  government  being  free  ; 
the  Canadians  and  the  New  Zealanders  do  the  same, 
and  we  Irishmen  are  the  only  units  in  France  to-day 
taking  our  part  in  the  war  who  are  obliged  to  admit 
that  the  country  we  come  from  is  denied  those  privileges 
which    have   made    the    Empire    the  strong  organization 

»  This  might  mislead.  The  exclusively  Protestant  charncter  of 
the  Ulster  Division  was  not  maintained  in  France,  and  it  came 
to  include  many  Catholic  Irishmen  in  the  rank  and  file  and  not 
a  few  among  the  officers — all  in  equal  comradeship. — S.  G. 


THE   REBELLION   AND  ITS  SEQUEL       253 

which  it  is  to-day.  If  safeguards  are  necessary — I  speak 
only  for  myself,  and  I  do  not  speak  for  anybody  else 
on  these  benches,  because  I  have  been  away  from  this 
House  so  long  that  I  have  almost  lost  touch  with  things 
— as  far  as  my  own  personal  opinion  goes,  there  is  nothing 
I  would  not  do,  and  there  is  no  length  to  which  I  would 
not  go,  in  order  to  meet  the  real  objections  or  to  secure 
the  real  confidence,  friendship  and  affection  of  my  country- 
men in  the  North  of  Ireland. 

"  For  my  own  part,  I  would  gladly,  if  it  would  ease 
the  situation,  agree  to  an  arrangement  whereby  it  might 
be  possible  for  His  Majesty  the  King,  if  he  so  desired, 
to  call  in  someone  at  the  starting  of  a  new  Irish  govern- 
ment, a  gentleman  representing  the  portion  of  the  country 
and  the  section  of  the  community  which  the  First  Lord 
represents  ;  and  if  a  representative  of  that  kind  were 
placed  with  his  hand  upon  the  helm  of  the  fir«t  Irish 
Parliament,  I,  at  any  rate,  as  far  as  I  am  concerned, 
would  give  him  the  loyal  and  the  strong  support  which 
I  have  given  to  every  leader  I  have  supported  in  this 
House.  After  all,  these  are  times  of  sacrifice,  and  every 
man  is  called  upon  to  make  some  sacrifices.  Men  and 
women  and  children  alike  have  to  do  something  in  these 
days,  and  is  it  too  much  to  appeal  to  the  right  honour- 
able gentleman  and  his  friends  to  sacrifice  some  part 
of  their  position  in  order  to  lead  the  majority  of  their 
countrymen  and  to  bring  about  that  which  the  whole 
English-speaking  world  desires,  namely,  a  real  recon- 
ciliation of  Ireland  ?  I  apologize  for  having  detained 
the  House  so  long,  but  this  is  a  matter  upon  which  I 
feel  strongly,  and  I  feel  all  the  more  strongly  about  it 
because  I  know  that  I  am  trjdng  altogether  too  feebly, 
but  as  strongly  as  I  can,  to  represent  what  I  Jcnow  to 
be  the  wishes  nearest  to  the  hearts  of  tens  of  thousands 
of  Irishmen  who  went  with  me  and  their  colleagues  to 
France,  many  of  whom  will  never  return,  all  of  Avhom 
are  suffering   the  privations  and  the  hardship  and  the 


254  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST   YEARS 

risk  and  the  wellnigh  intolerable  circumstances  of  life 
in  France.  I  want  to  speak  for  these  men,  and  if  they 
could  all  speak  with  one  voice  and  with  one  accord,  they 
would  say  to  this  House,  to  men  in  every  part  of  it,  to 
Conservatives,  Liberals  and  Labour  men,  to  their  National- 
ist countrymen  and  to  their  countrymen  from  the  North 
of  Ireland :  In  the  name  of  God,  we  here  who  are  about  to 
die,  perhaps,  ask  you  to  do  that  which  largely  induced 
us  to  leave  our  homes  ;  to  do  that  which  our  fathers 
and  mothers  taught  us  to  long  for  ;  to  do  that  which  is 
all  wo  desire:  make  our  country  happy  and  contented, 
and  enable  us,  when  we  meet  the  Canadians  and  the 
Australians  and  the  New  Zealanders  side  by  side  in  the 
common  cause  and  the  common  field,  to  say  to  them, 
'  Our  country,  just  as  yours,  has  self-government  mthin 
the  Empire.'  " 

I  have  given  the  speech  almost  in  full  as  it  stands  in 
print  after  the  opening  paragraph.  But  I  cannot  give 
the  effect  of  what  was  heard  by  a  densely  crowded  House 
in  absolute  silence.  It  was  not  an  argument ;  it  was 
an  appeal.  There  was  not  a  cheer,  not  a  murmur  of 
agreement.  They  were  not  needed,  they  would  have 
been  felt  an  impertinence,  so  great  was  the  respect  and 
the  sympathy.  As  the  speaker  stood  there  in  war-stained 
khaki,  his  hair  showed  grey,  his  face  was  seamed  with 
lines,  but  there  was  in  every  word  the  freshness  and 
simplicity  of  a  nature  that  age  had  not  touched.  In 
his  usual  place  on  the  upper  bench  beside  his  brother, 
he  poured  out  his  words  with  the  flow  and  passion  of  a 
bird's  song.  He  was  out  of  the  sphere  of  argument ; 
but  the  whole  experience  of  a  long  and  honourable  life- 
time was  vibrant  in  that  utterance.  He  spoke  from  his 
heart.  All  that  had  gone  to  make  his  faith,  all  the  inmost 
convictions  of  his  life  were  implicit — and  throughout  all 
ran  the  sense  in  the  assembly  who  heard  him,  not  only 
that  he  had  risked,  but  that  he  was  eager  to  give  his  life 
for  proof.     It  was  not  strange  that  this  should  bo  eo, 


THE  REBELLION  AND  ITS  SEQUEL       255 

for  he  was  going  on  what  he  believed  would  be  his  last 
journey  to  Fiance  ;  and  when  he  reached  the  supreme 
moment  of  hiy  passion  w  ith  the  words  "  In  the  name  of 
God,  we  here  who  are  about  to  die,  perhaps,"  the  last 
word  was  little  more  than  a  concession  to  the  conventions. 

It  was  a  speech,  in  short,  that  made  one  believe  in 
impossibilities  ;  but  in  Parliament  no  miracles  happen. 
Mr.  Lloyd  George  replied,  as  John  Redmond  expected — 
declaring  that  the  Government  were  willing  to  give  Home 
Rule  at  once  to  "  the  parts  of  Ireland  which  unmistakably 
demand  it,"  but  would  be  no  party  to  placing  under 
Nationalist  rule  people  who  were  "  as  alien  in  blood,  in 
religious  faith,  in  traditions,  in  outlook  from  the  rest  of 
Ireland  as  the  inhabitants  of  Fife  or  Aberdeen."  No 
Liberal  Minister  had  ever  before  so  completely  adopted 
the  Ulster  theory  of  two  nations.  Taxed  with  the  refusal 
to  allow  Ulster  counties  to  declare  by  vote  which  group 
they  belonged  to,  he  declined  to  discuss  "  geographical 
limitations  "  at  present,  but  indicated  that  if  Irish  members 
could  accept  the  principle  of  separate  treatment  for  two 
peoples,  there  were  "  ways  and  means  by  which  it  could 
be  worked  out."  Suggestion  of  a  Conference  of  Irishmen 
was  thrown  out,  or  of  a  Commission  to  discuss  the  details 
of  partition.  Redmond,  in  replying,  answered  to  tliis  that 
*'  after  experience  of  the  last  negotiations  he  would  enter 
into  no  more  negotiations."  He  warned  the  Govern- 
ment that  the  whole  constitutional  movement  was  in 
danger.  There  were  in  Ireland  "  serious  men,  men  of 
ability,  men  with  command  of  money,"  who  were  bent 
on  smashing  it. 

"  After  fiftj'  years  of  labour  on  constitutional  lines  we 
had  practically  banished  the  revolutionary  party  from 
Ireland.     Now  again,  after  fifty  years,  it  has  risen." 

The  rest  was  a  prophecy  only  too  accurate  : 

"  If  the  constitutional  movement  disappears,  the  Prime 
Minister  will  find  himself  face  to  face  with  a  revolutionary 
movement,   and  he   will  find  it  impossible   to  preserve 


256  JOHN   REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

any  of  the  forms  even  of  constitutionalism.  He  will  have 
to  govern  Ireland  by  the  naked  sword.  I  cannot  picture 
to  myself  a  condition  of  things  in  which  the  Prime  Minister, 
with  his  record  behind  him,  would  be  an  instrument  to 
carry  out  a  government  of  that  kind.  ...  I  say  this 
plainly.  No  Briti:sh  statesman,  no  matter  what  his 
platonic  affection  for  Home  Rule  may  have  been  in  the 
past,  no  matter  what  party  he  may  belong  to,  who  by 
his  conduct  once  again  teaches  the  Irish  jjeople  the  lesson 
that  any  National  leader  who,  taking  his  political  life 
in  his  hands,  endeavours  to  combine  local  and  Imperial 
patriotism — endeavours  to  combine  loyalty  to  Ireland's 
rights  with  loyalty  to  the  Empire — anyone  who  again 
teaches  the  lesson  that  such  an  one  is  certain  to  be  let 
down  and  betrayed  by  this  course,  is  guilty  of  treason, 
not  only  to  the  liberties  of  Ireland  but  to  the  unity  and 
strength  and  best  interests  of  this  Empire." 

After  these  bitter  ^^ords  he  called  on  his  colleagues 
not  "  to  continue  a  useless  and  humiliating  debate," 
but  to  withdraw  from  the  House  :  and  we  accordingly 
followed  him  into  the  lobbj'.  In  our  absence  the  discus- 
sion continued,  in  a  tone  not  flattering  to  the  Govern- 
ment. It  was  remarkable  for  one  utterance  from 
Mr.   Healy,  concerning   Redmond : 

"  I  wish  to  say  at  the  outset  that  in  my  opinion  this 
Empire  owes  him  a  debt  of  gratitude  which  it  can  never 
repay,  and  I  wish  also  to  say  of  him  as  an  opponent  that 
in  my  opinion,  if  his  advice  had  been  taken  by  the  War 
Office,  it  is  absolutely  true,  as  he  contends,  that  you 
would  have  marshalled  in  Ireland  from  two  hundred 
thousand  to  three  hundred  thousand  men,  from  whom 
large  drafts  could  have  been  drawn  ;  and  I  will  further 
say  I  believe  if  his  advice  had  been  taken  the  elements 
of  rebellion  would  have  been  appeased." 

It  was  plain  that  matters  could  not  stay  at  this 
point ;  but  our  breach  with  the  Government  was  complete 
for  the  moment.     Redmond's  demand  was  fur  a  full  and 


THE  REBELLION  AND  ITS  SEQUEL       257 

definite  statement  of  policy,  which  should  be  made  in 
the  House  of  Commons  and  there  discussed.  On  May  loth 
Mr.  Bonar  Law  announced  that  the  Prime  Minister  would 
make  a  communication  to  the  leaders  of  Irish  parties. 
It  was  explained  that  this  method  of  outlining  the  pro- 
posals would  be  only  preliminary  to  discussion. 

On  that  evening  a  great  banquet  to  General  Smuts 
was  given  in  the  House  of  Lords  by  Parliament.  Strong 
pressure  was  used  with  Redmond  to  attend  it,  and  he 
consented  unwillingly.  He  w\as  ill — physically  ill,  prob- 
ably with  the  beginnings  of  his  fatal  disease — and  morally 
sick  at  heart  and  out  of  hope.  Another  Irish  election 
in  South  Longford  had  been  strenuously  fought  by  the 
party  and  had  been  won  by  the  Sinn  Feiner  ;  a  decisive 
factor  in  the  election  was  the  issue  of  a  letter  from  Arch- 
bishop Walsh  which  grossly  misrepresented  Redmond's 
whole  policy  and  action.  He  was  in  no  humour  for 
banquetings,  and  at  this  moment  the  Irish  party  was 
nearly  back  at  its  old  attitude,  which  dictated  a  refusal 
to  have  part  or  lot  with  the  House  on  such  ceremonial 
occasions. I  But  Redmond's  feeling  for  South  Africa 
was  specially  strong,  his  feeling  about  the  war  was  un- 
changed ;  and  this  was  a  recognition  of  a  great  South 
African  statesman's  services  in  the  war.  He  let  himself 
be  persuaded  into  accepting. 

At  the  dinner  he  sat  next  to  a  Liberal  peer,  a  member 
of  the  late  Government,  who  talked  with  him  of  Irish 
possibilities.  Redmond  did  not  know  what  the  Govern- 
ment intended.  He  was  told,  now,  that  the  Government 
had  written  a  letter  to  him  and  to  Sir  Edward  Carson 
setting  out  plainly  an  offer  for  the  immediate  introduction 
of  Home  Rule  with  the  exclusion  of  the  six  counties. 

Redmond  said  :  "It  is  impossible  that  we  should 
accept ;    nothing  can  come  of  it."     He  was  asked  then 

»  We  had  never  been  parties,  for  instance,  to  receptions  of  Prime 
Ministers  from  the  overseas  Dominions,  even  when  they  were  our 
close  friends  and  supporters. 

18 


258  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST   YEARS 

what  hope  he  saw.  He  answered,  as  he  had  for  some 
time  been  saying  in  private,  that  the  onlj'  chance  lay 
in  a  Conference  or  Convention  of  Irishmen  ;  but  it  must 
include  everybody,  and  in  no  sense  be  limited  to  discussion 
between  the  Irish  party  and  the  Unionists.  The  Liberal 
peer  expressed  great  interest  and  proved  it  in  action. 
Next  morning  he  was  with  Redmond  by  ten  o'clock,  and 
got  his  view  in  writing  that  it  might  be  placed  before 
the  Cabinet,  who  were  to  meet  at  eleven  to  decide  finally'' 
the  terms  of  their  letter. 

As  a  result  of  this  intervention,  the  letter,  instead  of 
containing  a  single  proposal,  offered  two  alternatives  : 
the  second  was  so  oddly  tacked  on  that  many  at  the  time 
said  it  read  like  a  postscript.  So,  in  point  of  fact,  it  was. 
That  was  the  genesis  of  the  Irish  Convention. 

His  son,  from  whom  I  know  this,  said  to  me  that  more 
than  once,  when  things  were  hopeful  in  the  Convention, 
Redmond  said  to  him,  "  What  a  lucky  thing  it  was  I 
went  to  that  dinner  !  " 


CHAPTER   VIII 
THE  CONVENTION  AND  THE   END 


rriHE  Longford  election  had  in  reality  been  not  merely 
JL  a  S3'mptom,  but  an  event  of  great  importance.  It 
was  a  notice  of  dismissal  to  the  Parliamentary  party. 
There  was  no  reason  to  suppose  anything  specially  un- 
favourable to  us  in  the  local  conditions.  Neither  candi- 
date made  a  special  appeal  to  the  electors  ;  nor  was 
the  constituency  in  any  sense  a  stronghold  of  Sinn  Fein. 
The  fact  was  that  the  countrj^  as  a  whole  had  ceased  to 
believe  in  the  Parliamentary  j^arty  as  an  efficient  machine 
for  obtaining  the  national  ends.  The  organization  of 
the  United  Irish  League  had  lost  touch  with  the  young  ; 
the  main  support  we  had  lay  in  the  Ancient  Order  of 
Hibernians,  which  many  Nationalists  disliked  on  principle 
because  it  was  limited  to  Catholics.  What  had  not  yet 
disappeared  up  till  July  1916,  though  it  was  threatened, 
was  belief  in  the  principle  of  constitutional  action  as 
against  revolutionary  methods. 

Willie  Redmond,  who  never  lacked  instinct,  and  whose 
separation  from  party  politics  by  conditions  of  service 
gave  him  a  vantage-ground  of  detachment,  reached  a 
shrewd  view  of  the  position  before  the  Longford  vacancy 
occurred.  He  pressed  upon  his  brother  that  we  should 
all  retire,  saying  plainly  that  we  had  been  too  long  in 
possession,  and  should  hand  over  the  task  of  representing 
Ireland  at  Westminster  to  younger  men.  His  association 
with  the  Volunteer  Committee,  brief  though  it  was,  had 
made  him  more  aware  than  most  of  our  colleagues  how 

269 


260  JOHN   REDMOND'S   LAIST   YEARS 

wide  was  the  estrangement  between  us  and  the  new 
Ireland  ;  but  it  also  taught  him  to  believe  that  many 
of  the  men  whom  he  had  met  there  would  be  willing 
to  take  up  the  task  on  constitutional  lines. 

This  proposal  never  came  before  the  party.  But  after 
Longford  had  given  its  decision,  it  was  proposed  that  we 
should  accept  the  verdict  in  general  and  resign  in  a  body. 
Those  who  put  forward  the  suggestion  felt  that  some 
drastic  action  was  needed  to  force  upon  Ireland  the 
responsibility'  for  a  clear  choice  between  the  two  courses, 
constitutional  and  unconstitutional.  Redmond,  as  Chair- 
man, advised  strongly  against  this.  He  said  that  it  would 
be  a  lack  of  courage  :  that  one  defeat  or  two  defeats 
should  not  turn  us  from  our  course.  But  it  is  clear  to 
me  that  he  welcomed  the  Convention  as  another  and  a 
better  means  of  effecting  the  same  end — of  replacing 
the  existing  Parliamentary  party  by  another  body  of  men. 

On  May  21st  Mr.  Lloj^d  George's  speech  gave  the  go-by 
completely  to  the  detailed  proj)osal  for  a  settlement  on 
the  basis  of  partition  to  which  the  Cabinet — including 
Sir  Edward  Carson — had  consented.  It  dealt  only  with 
the  alternative  plan  suggested  in  the  conclusion  of  the 
published  letter.  The  Government  had  decided  to  invite 
Irishmen  to  put  forward  their  own  proposals  for  the 
government  of  their  country,  he  said.  This  invitation 
was  directed  to  a  Convention  not  merely  of  political 
parties,  although  they  must  all  be  represented — the 
followers  of  Redmond,  of  Mr.  O'Brien,  the  Ulster  Union- 
ists, the  Southern  Unionists,  "  and  he  hoped  also  the  Sinn 
Feiners  as  well.''  But  in  the  main  it  was  to  consist  of 
"  representatives  of  the  local  governing  bodies,  of  the 
Churches,  of  the  trade  unions,  of  the  commercial  interests, 
of  educational  interests  "  ;  it  w'as  to  be  ''a  real  repre- 
sentation of  Irish  life  and  activity  in  all  their  leading 
branches."  It  was  to  be  pledged  in  advance  to  no  con- 
clusions— except  one,  and  that  was  only  indicated  by 
implication.     "  If  substantial  agreement  should  be  reached 


THE  CONVENTION   AND  THE   END         201 

as  to  the  character  and  scope  of  the  Constitution  for  the 
future  government  of  Ireland  within  the  Empire"  (these 
three  words  were  the  limitation),  Government  Avould 
"  accept  the  responsibility  for  taking  all  the  necessary 
steps  to  enable  the  Imperial  Parliament  to  give  legislative 
effect  to  tb?  con  elusion  a  of  the  Convention." 

A  recommendation  ■'yar'  ?^.dded,  amounting  to  a  dirvoiion, 
that  the  Convention  should  sit  with  closed  doors  and 
publish  nothing  of  its  proceedings  till  their  conclusion. 

Nothing  was  said  to  define  the  all-important  words 
"  substantial  agreement."  But  the  Prime  Minister  laid 
grave  emphasis  on  the  importance  of  a  settlement  for 
the  purpose  of  the  war.  The  limitation  upon  Ulster's 
claim  was  plainly  conceived  by  him  to  lie  in  Ulster's 
sense  of  an  Imperial  necessity'.  "  The  Empire  cannot 
afford  uncured  sores  that  sap  its  vigour.  The  entire 
strength  of  Great  Britain  and  the  whole-hearted  support 
of  Ireland  are  essential  to  victory."  He  appealed  "  to 
Irishmen  of  all  faiths,  political  and  religious,  and  especial!}' 
to  the  patriotic  spirit  of  Ulster,  to  helji  by  healing." 

Redmond,  in  following  him.  assumed  that  there  would 
be  concurrence  from  all  sections  of  Irishmen.  It  must 
be  ■'  a  free  assembly  "—no  proposal  must  be  barred  in 
advance  :  it  must  be  representative  of  "  every  i-lass, 
creed  and  interest  "—and  in  recapitulating  these,  he 
added  the  Irish  peers.  In  regard  to  political  parties 
and  bodies,  as  such,  he  desired  a  very  limited  represen- 
tation. The  United  Irish  League,  "  the  militant  official 
organization  of  the  Irish  party,"  should  be  unrepresented, 
and  he  advised  the  same  in  regard  to  other  purelj'^  political 
organizations  and  societies.  For  the  Irish  party  itself 
he  asked  a  representation  only  equal  in  number  to  that 
given  to  Irish  Unionists.  The  Cork  Independents  must 
have  what  they  considered  a  full  and  adequate  number  ; 
and  for  Sinn  Fein  he  asked  "  a  generous  representation." 

Then  he  added  : 

"  So  anxious  am   I  that  no  wreckers,   mere  wreckers, 


262  JOHN   REDMONDS   LAST  YEARS 

should  go  on  that  body — I  do  not  believe  any  men  would 
go  on  as  MTeckers,  but  any  men  who  would  be  regarded 
bj'  their  opponents  as  going  on  it  as  wreckers — that  on 
the  question  of  personalities,  I  would  be  verj-  glad,  if 
there  are  protagonists  on  one  side  or  the  other  who  during 
the  last  twenty  or  thirty  years  or  more  have  been  engaged 
in  tlie  struggle  and  who — there  have  been  faults  on  both 
sides — have  done  things  and  said  things  which  have  left 
bitter  memories,  I  should  be  very  glad  that  such  men 
should  be  left  off.  If  there  were  any  feeling  that  I  am 
such  a  man  mj''self,  I  would  be  only  too  willing  and  happy 
to  stand  down  "  (he  was  interrupted  by  cries  of  *'  No, 
No")  "if  by  doing  so  I  could  promote  harmony." 

In  tliis  there  was  a  genuine  expression  of  the  desire 
which  governed  his  whole  conduct  in  the  Convention,  to 
get  away  from  the  old  lines  with  their  old  traditional 
antagonisms,  and  refer  the  solution  not  to  Irish  politicians 
but  to  Ireland  as  a  whole.  AVliat  followed  in  his  speech 
gave  positive  development  to  the  self-denying  ordinance 
whicli  he  had  proposed  for  the  party  machines.  He 
asked  for  a  nominated  element — first,  to  make  sure  that 
men  obviouslj^  suitable,  who  none  the  less  might  not 
happen  to  be  elected,  should  find  a  place  :  and  secondly, 
to  increase  still  further  the  Unionist  rejiresentation. 

He  added  once  more  a  plea  for  quick  action  ;  dilatori- 
ness  had  had  much  to  do,  he  said,  with  the  (lovernment's 
late  failures  in  Ireland,  But,  if  prompt  stejjs  were  taken 
on  the  path  outlined,  he  would,  in  spite  of  all  that  had 
come  and  gone,  face  the  new  venture  with  good  heart. 
Yet  even  in  his  confidence  there  was  the  pathetic  accent 
of  one  who  feels  need  to  bid  defiance  to  despair. 

"  Although  I  know  I  lay  myself  open  perhaps  to  ridicule 
as  too  sanguine  a  prophet,  I  have  some  assured  hoj^e  that 
the  result  msiy  be  blessed  for  Ireland  as  for  the  Empire. 
.  .  .  The  life  of  a  politician,  especially  of  an  Irish  poli- 
tician, is  one  long  series  of  postponements  and  com- 
promises and  disapf>ointments  and  disillusions.  ,  .  .  Many 


THE   CONVENTION   AND   THE   END        263 

of  oiu'  cherished  ideals,  our  ideals  of  complete,  speedy 
and  almost  immediate  triumph  of  our  policy  and  of  our 
cause,  have  faded,  some  of  them  almost  disappeared. 
And  we  know  that  it  is  a  serious  consideration  for  those 
of  us  who  have  spent  forty  years  at  this  work  and  now 
are  growdng  old,  if  we  have  to  face  further  postponements. 
For  my  part,  I  feel  we  must  not  shrink  from  compromise. 
If  by  this  Convention  which  is  now  proposed  we  can 
secure  substantial  agreement  amongst  our  jDeople  in 
Ireland,  it  will  be  worth  all  the  heartburnings  and  post- 
ponements and  disappointments  and  disillusions  of  the 
last  thirty  or  forty  years." 

The  omens  were  not  favourable  to  this  storm-beaten 
courage.  When  he  sat  down,  Sir  John  Lonsdale  rose 
to  reiterate  on  behalf  of  the  Ulster  Unionists  that  they 
"  could  not  and  would  not  be  driven  into  a  Home  Rule 
Parliament " — and  that  they  relied  absolutely  on  the 
pledges  that  they  should  not  be  coerced.  Mr.  William 
O'Brien  followed.  After  years  of  advocating  settlement  by 
conference  among  Irishmen,  he  condemned  this  proposal 
as  coming  six  or  seven  years  too  late,  and  as  defective  in 
its  machinery,  in  that  it  proposed  a  large  body  of  men  : 
"  A  dozen  Irishmen  of  the  right  stamp  '"  would  be  the 
proper  Conference  ;  and  the  proposal  of  partition  should 
be  barred  out  in  advance.  If  the  experiment  were  tried 
now  and  failed,  the  failure  would  "  kill  any  reasonable 
hope  in  our  time  of  reconstructing  the  constitutional 
movement  upon  honest  lines."  Ireland  is  always  fruitful 
in  Cassandras  who  do  not  lack  power  to  assist  in  the  fulfil- 
ment of  their  ill-bodings,  and  this  speech  foreshadowed 
Mr,  O'Brien's  intention  to  abstain.  Sir  Edward  Carson 
and  Mr.  Devlin  gave  the  debate  a  more  promising  tone  : 
but  it  was  difficult  for  anybody  to  be  sanguine. 

Preparation,  discussion,  went  on  in  private  and  in 
public.  It  was  soon  indicated  that  Sinn  Fein  would  take 
no  part,  on  the  double  ground,  first,  that  the  Convention 
was  not  elective  in  any  democratic  sense,  for  all  the  repre- 


264  JOHN  REDMONDS  LAST  YEARS 

sentatives  of  local  bodies  had  been  elected  before  the 
war,  before  the  rebellion,  before  the  new  movement  took 
hold  in  Ireland  ;  and  secondly,  that  it  was  committed 
in  advance  to  a  settlement  within  the  Empire.  On  the 
other  hand,  Redmond  was  flooded  with  corresiDondence 
concerning  candidates  for  membership  of  the  new  body. 
There  was  also  the  question  of  a  meeting-place.  The 
Royal  College  of  Surgeons  offered  its  building  with  its 
theatre,  possessing  admirable  facilities.  But  Trinity 
College  offered  the  Regent  House.  The  conveniences  here 
were  in  all  ways  inferior ;  but  Trinity  was  the  nearest 
place  to  the  old  Parliament  House  ;  much  more  than 
that,  it  was  the  most  historic  institution  in  Ireland.  Its 
political  associations  of  the  past  and  the  present  were 
strangely  blended  and  Redmond  liked  it  none  the  less  for 
that.     He  decided  to  press  for  acceptance  of  this  offer. 

Then  across  the  current  of  all  our  thought  came  the 
news  of  the  Battle  of  Messines.  Troops  had  been  massing 
for  some  time  on  the  sector  of  line  which  the  Irish  Divisions 
had  now  held  since  the  previous  October  ;  and  the  day 
was  plainly  in  sight  which  had  been  expected  since  spring, 
when  they  were  to  try  and  carrj^  positions  in  front  of 
which  so  much  blood  had  been  vainly  shed.  On  June  7th, 
at  the  clearing  of  light,  all  was  in  readiness  :  the  Ulster- 
men  and  ours  still  in  the  centre  of  the  attack  from  Span- 
broekmolen  to  Wytschaete.  Just  before  the  moment 
fixed,  men  could  see  clearly  :  in  half  a  minute  all  was 
blotted  out.  The  eighteen  huge  land-mines  in  whose 
shafts  our  second  line  had  been  so  often  billeted  were 
now  at  last  exploded  and  the  sky  was  full  of  powdered 
earth,  with  God  knows  what  other  fragments.  In  that 
darkness  the  trooj)s  went  over. 

For  once  staff-work  and  execution  harmonized  per- 
fectly ;  the  success  was  complete,  and  the  sacrifice  small. 
The  Irish  raced  for  their  positions,  and  no  one  could  say 
who  was  first  on  the  goal.  News  of  the  victory  quickly 
reached   Loudon— great    news   for    Ireland.     Australians 


THE  CONVENTION  AND  THE  END        265 

and  New  Zealanders  had  their  full  share  in  it,  but  the 
shoulder  to  shoulder  advance  of  the  two  Irish  Divisions 
caught  everyone's  imagination  :    it  was  Ireland's  day. 

Then  came  through  the  message  that  Willie  Redmond 
had  fallen. 

E'^^er  since  hie  illness  in  the  previous  summer  he  had 
heen  taken  away  from  bis  work  as  comp?,-ny  commander  ; 
at  his  age — fifty-six — he  was  probably  the  oldest  man 
in  any  capacity  with  the  Division.  A  post  was  found 
for  him  on  General  Hickie's  divisional  staff  which  made 
him  specially  responsible  for  the  comforts  of  the  men, 
in  trenches  and  out  of  trenches.  In  the  battles  on  the 
Somme  he  entreated  hard  to  be  let  rejoin  his  battalion, 
but  General  Hickie  issued  peremptor}^  orders  which  did 
not  allow  him  to  pass  the  first  dressing-station.  Here, 
indeed,  he  was  under  terrible  shell  fire  and  saw  many  of 
his  comrades  struck  down  ;  but  he  was  not  content. 
For  this  new  battle  he  insisted  that  he  must  be  in  the 
actual  advance.  If  he  were  refused  leave,  he  said  he 
would  break  all  discipline  and  take  it.  He  was  permitted 
to  be  with  the  third  attacking  wave  ;  but  he  slipped 
forward  and  joined  the  first,  on  the  right,  where  the  line 
touched  the  Ulstermen.  So  it  happened  that  when  he 
fell,  struck  by  two  rifle  bullets,  the  stretcher-bearers 
wlio  helped  him  and  carried  him  down  to  the  dressing- 
station  were  those  of  an  Ulster  regiment.  He  was  brought 
back  to  the  hospital  in  the  convent  at  Locre,  familiar 
to  all  of  us  by  many  memories  ;  for  the  nuns  kept  a 
restaurant  for  officers  in  the  refectory,  and  he  and  I  had 
dined  there  more  than  once  with  leading  men  of  the 
Ulster  Division.  His  wounds  were  not  grave  ;  but  he 
had  overtaxed  himself,  and  in  a  fcAv  hours  he  succumbed 
to  shock.  It  was  the  death  that  he  had  foreseen,  that 
he  had  almost  desired — a  death  that  many  might  have 
envied  hini.  He  had  said  more  than  once  since  the 
rebellion  that  he  thought  he  could  best  serve  Ireland  by 
dying  ;    and  in  the  sequel,  so  deep  was  the  impression 


266  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

left  by  his  deatli  that  it  seemed  at  timc!^  as  if  liis  thought 
had  been  true. 

Yet  one  aspect  of  it  was  overlooked  by  many — the 
loss  inflicted  on  his  brother,  the  Irish  leader.  It  was  not 
merely  that  Redmond  lost  the  sole  near  kinsman  of  his 
generation  ;  he  lost  in  him  the  closest  of  those  comrades 
who  had  been  allied  with  him  in  all  the  stages  of  his  life's 
fight.  The  veterans  of  the  old  party  had  been  vanishing 
rapidly  from  the  scene  ;  name  succeeded  name  quickly 
on  our  death-roll.  This  death  left  Redmond  lonely, 
and  sorely  stricken  in  his  affections.  But  it  did  more. 
It  dej)rived  him  of  a  counsellor,  and  perhaps  the  only 
counsellor  he  had  who  temperamentally  shared  his  own 
point  of  view.  More  especially  now  in  the  war,  when 
the  leader's  wisdom  in  giving  the  lead  which  he  had 
given  began  to  be  gravely  questioned  even  by  his  own 
supporters,  it  was  invaluable  for  him  to  have  backing 
from  one  who  had  taken  the  war  as  part  of  his  life's 
creed — who  knew  no  hesitancies,  no  reserves  in  his  con- 
viction that  the  right  course  had  been  followed,  for  the 
right  thing  was  to  do  the  right.  Finally  and  chiefly, 
Willie  RedTuond  was  the  only  man  who  could  break 
through  his  brother's  constitutional  reserve  and  could 
force  him  into  discussion.  In  the  months  that  were  to 
come  siicli  a  man  was  badly  needed.  The  loss  of  him 
meant  to  John  Redmond  a  loss  of  personal  efficiency. 
Sorrow  gave  a  strong  grip  to  depression  on  a  brooding 
mind  which  had  always  a  proneness  to  melancholy,  which 
was  now  linked  with  a  sick  body,  and  which  lived  among 
disappointments  and  grief  and  the  sense  of  rancorous 
dislike  in  men  who  once  thought  it  a  privilege  to  cheer 
him  on  his  passing. 

Add  to  all  this  that  Redmond's  one  hope  for  Ireland 
now  lay  in  the  Convention,  and  that  he  counted  with 
good  reason  on  his  soldier  brother's  influence  there — as 
no  man  could  fail  to  do  who  had  seen  the  effect  which 
his  last  speech  produced  upon  the  House  of  Commons. 


THE  CONVENTION  AND  THE  END        267 

No  doubt,  however,  part  of  the  service  which  Willie 
Redmond  rendered  to  Ireland  in  dying  lay  in  the  sympathy 
which  he  conciliated  to  his  leader — in  whom  men  saw, 
rightly,  not  only  his  nearest  kinsman,  but  the  represen- 
tative of  the  principles  for  which  the  soldier-politician 
died.  The  sjnnpathy  was  genuine  and  it  was  widespread  ; 
yet  so  reserved  was  John  Redmond  that  few,  I  think, 
guessed  how  deeply  the  blow  had  struck  home.  Still 
less  did  they  realize  how  much  was  meant  by  the  bereave- 
ment which  followed  immediately.  Pat  O'Brien,  who 
had  been  through  all  vicissitudes  the  faithful  and  devoted 
helper  of  his  friend  and  leader,  was  suddenly  prostrated 
by  a  stroke.  He  came  down  to  the  House  again  ;  he 
could  not  keep  away  from  the  place  of  his  duty,  where 
for  a  quarter  of  a  century  he  had  scarcely  missed  one 
division  in  a  hundred,  where  he  had  kept  watch  for  Red- 
mond like  the  most  trusty  sheep-dog  ;  but  death  was 
written  over  him  and  it  came  in  a  few  days.  He  was 
the  one  friend,  I  believe,  whom  Redmond  would  have 
taken  with  him  to  Aughavanagh  after  Willie  Redmond's 
death.  Now,  Aughavanagh,  which  had  been  a  place  of 
rest,  was  a  place  of  intense  loneliness.  Yet  to  Augha- 
vanagh Redmond  had  withdrawn  himself,  like  a  wounded 
creature  ;  and  from  Augha\^anagh  he  came  to  Dublin 
for  Pat  O'Brien's  funeral  in  Glasnevin.  Then,  and  then 
only  in  his  lifetime  people  saw  him  publicly  ])rcak  down  ; 
he  had  to  be  led  away  from  the  grave. 

Meanwhile,  he  was  beset  by  ceaseless  correspondence 
concerning  the  numbers  and  composition  of  the  assembly 
to  which  the  British  Government  on  his  suggestion  had 
decided  to  entrust  so  great  a  charge.  But  a  startling 
politiccil  event  indicated  only  too  plainly  how  much 
belated  that  decision  had  been. 

Directly  the  proposal  for  a  Convention  had  been  dis- 
closed, with  its  attempt  to  create  a  new  atmosphere, 
it  was  put  to  the  Government  that  Sinn  Fein  could  not 
be  expected  to  take  part  in  the  Convention   while  its 


268  JOHN   REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

leaders  were  in  jail  or  under  detention  as  suspects.  This 
representation  came  from  several  quarters,  and  it  was 
soon  publicly  pleaded  by  the  Nationalist  party  ;  but 
it  was,  to  my  knowledge,  immediately  put  forward  by 
English  members  of  Parliament,  the  prime  mover  being 
a  Unionist  soldier,  Major  J.  W.  Hills,  M.P.  As  usual, 
the  ?ydTsnt5ge  of  prompt  action  was  urged  ;  and  as  usual, 
the  concession  was  delayed  till  it  had  lost  its  grace  and 
seemed  to  be  extracted.  Sinn  Fein's  opinion  in  all  these 
days  was  hardening  against  the  Convention,  which  was 
represented  as  a  mere  trick  to  gain  time  and  to  conciliate 
American  good  will  by  an  unreal  offer. 

When  the  prisoners  were  released,  a  new  personage 
immediately  came  into  the  public  eye.  It  was  certain 
that  one  of  them  would  be  nominated  to  contest  the 
vacancy  in  East  Clare  left  by  Willie  Redmond's  death  ; 
the  choice  fell  on  Mr.  de  Valera  ;  and  the  world  learnt 
that  in  these  months  while  the  imprisoned  Sinn  Feiners 
had  been  discussing  their  plans  for  the  future — for  the 
right  of  association  as  political  prisoners  had  been  con- 
ceded to  them — this  young  man  had  been  recognized  by 
his  fellows  as  the  leading  spirit.  Ireland  as  a  whole  knew 
nothing  of  him.  He  was  the  son  of  a  Southern  American 
and  a  county  Limerick  woman  ;  scholarly,  a  keen  Gaelic 
Leaguer,  by  profession  a  teacher  of  mathematics.  In 
the  rebellion  he  had  held  Roland's  bakery,  a  large  building 
covering  the  approaches  to  Dublin  from  Kingstown  by 
rail  ;  he  had  been  the  last  of  the  leaders  to  surrender, 
and  had  earned  high  opinions  by  his  conduct  in  these 
operations.  This  was  the  Sinn  Fein  candidate  for  East 
Clare — a  county  Avhere  "  extreme "  men  had  always 
been  numerous. 

The  view  was  expressed  that  he  should  have  been 
opposed  by  one  who  took  up  the  cause  where  W^illie 
Redmond  left  it — by  a  soldier  who  was  a  strong  National- 
ist and  strongly  identified  with  the  Parnellite  tradition. 
It  was  decided  that  we  should  stand  a  better  chance  if 


THE  CONVENTION   AND  THE   END         269 

constitutional  Nationalism  were  represented  by  a  Dublin 
lawyer  with  close  personal  ties  to  the  constituency.  How 
it  would  have  gone  had  a  soldier  been  put  up,  no  man 
can  say  ;  but  it  could  not  have  gone  worse.  Mr.  de  Valera 
won  by  a  majority  of  five  thousand.  He  was  a  stranger, 
but  he  stood  for  an  ideal.  The  alternative  ideal — which 
was  John  Redmond's  and  Willie  Redmond's — had  never 
been  put  before  the  electors.  The  election  W8«,  rightly, 
taken  as  a  repudiation  of  Redmond's  policy  ;  but  in  it 
Redmond's  policy  had  gone  undefended. 

The  newly  elected  8inn  Fein  leader  was  very  prominent 
in  these  days,  and  a  good  deal  of  his  eloquence  was  spent 
in  ridicule  of  the  Convention.  That  body  was  certainly 
starting  its  task  under  the  most  unpromising  auspices. 


II 

The  first  meeting  was  fixed  for  Jul}-  2.5.  On  the  evening 
before,  Redmond  came  up  and  there  was  an  informal 
discussion  between  the  Nationalist  members  of  Parlia- 
ment and  the  Catholic  Bishops.  There  were  four  of  each 
group.  Five  members  had  been  allowed  to  the  party 
and  as  many  to  the  Ulstermen.  Redmond  was  not 
present  at  the  meeting  when  selection  was  made,  but  he 
recommended  a  list,  consisting  in  addition  to  himself 
of  Mr.  Dillon,  Mr.  Devlin,  and  Mr.  Clancy,  K.C. — the 
latter  having  been  alwa^-s  his  most  trusted  adviser  in 
all  points  of  draftsmanship  ajid  constitutional  law.  My 
name  was  added  in  the  place  which  should  have  been 
his   brother's,   as   representing   Irish   troops. 

Mr.  Dillon,  however,  thought  it  better  not  to  serve, 
though  Redmond  pressed  him  very  strongly  to  do  so. 
He  considered  he  could  best  lielp  the  Convention  from 
outside  its  ranks.  Mr.  O'Brien  and  Mr.  Heal}'  had,  on 
different  grounds,  come  to  the  same  conclusion,  so  that 


270  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

we  lacked  the  assistance  of  three  commanding  person- 
alities in  Irish  life,  though  we  were  thereby  freed  from 
some  dangers  of  personal  friction.  A  vacant  place  was 
thus  left  in  our  five,  and  since  the  Ulster  party  had  decided 
to  put  in  only  two  members  of  Parliament,  filling  the 
other  places  with  local  men,  it  was  thought  well  that  we 
should  take  a  similar  representative,  Mr.  Harbison,  who 
spoke  for  the  county  of  Tyrone. 

Of  the  four  representatives  of  the  hierarchy.  Archbishop 
Harty  of  Cashel  had  always  been  a  downright  outspoken 
supporter  of  the  Parliamentary  party.  He  had  publicly 
denounced  the  rebellion  both  on  civil  and  on  moral 
grounds.  But  he  had  never  been  prominently  concerned 
with  political  affairs  as  such  ;  nor  had  the  Bishop  of 
Down  and  Connor,  Dr.  MacRory,  a  man  young  for  his 
office  and  not  long  in  it.  He  had  been  chosen,  no  doubt, 
to  guard  the  sj)ecial  interests  of  Catholicism  in  the  north- 
east corner.  The  others  were  of  a  very  different  stamp  ; 
no  two  in  Ireland  had  a  better  right  to  the  name  of  states- 
men. Dr.  O'Donnell,  the  Bishop  of  Raphoe,  had  been 
for  many  years  officially  one  of  the  treasurers  of  the 
United  Irish  League.  Since  the  foundation  of  the  Con- 
gested Districts  Board,  he  had  been  one  of  its  members, 
and  served  on  the  Dudley  Commission  which  inquired 
into  these  regions.  His  native  Donegal  could  show  the 
traces  of  his  influence  in  applying  remedial  measures  to 
what  was  once  its  terrible  poverty.  Dr.  Kelly,  the 
Bishoj)  of  Ross,  came  from  the  extreme  south  of  the 
same  western  coast-line  ;  a  keen  student  of  finance  and 
economics,  he  had  been  a  member  of  the  Primrose  Com- 
mittee on  Financial  Relations,  and,  before  that,  of  Lord 
C4eorge  Hamilton's  Commission  on  the  Poor  LaAV.  His 
repute  was  great  in  his  own  order  and  outside  his  own 
order.  In  any  assembly  these  two  brains  would  have 
been  distinguished. 

The  question  which  was  discussed  among  us  chiefly 
on  that  evening  concerned   the  choice   of  a  chairman. 


THE   CONVENTION  AND  THE   END         271 

Government  had  originally  proposed  to  nominate  this 
all-important  oflficer,  but  having  failed  to  solve  the  inter- 
minable dil'ficulties,  had  left  it  to  the  assembly.  Much 
trouble  was  anticipated  by  the  public.  On  the  whole, 
our  conclusion  pointed,  but  not  decisively,  to  the  choice 
which  was  eventually  made.  Redmond  swept  aside 
peremptorily  the  suggestion  of  himself. 

Next  day  we  assembled — some  ninety  persons.  The 
main  bulk  consisted  of  local  representatives — thirty-one 
chairmen  of  County  Councils,  one  only  having  declined  to 
serve.  Two  of  these,  Mr.  O'Dowd  and  Mr.  Fitzgibbon, 
were  members  of  our  party.  There  were  eight  repre- 
sentatives of  the  Urban  Councils,  over  and  above  the 
Lord  Maj^ors  of  Dublin,  Belfast  and  Cork  and  the  Mayor 
of  Derry.  Labour  had  seven  representatives,  one  of  whom, 
Mr.  Lundon,  representing  the  Agricultural  Labourers' 
Union  of  the  South,  was  an  Irish  member  of  Parlia- 
ment. One  was  a  railway  operative  from  Dublin  ;  one 
a  Catholic  Trade-Unionist  leader  from  Derry  ;  the  remain- 
ing four  came  from  Belfast.  Organized  labour  in  Dublin 
and  the  Southern  towns  had  endorsed  Sinn  Fein's  attitude 
and  declined  to  recognize  the  Convention. 

The  Southern  Unionist  Group  was  led  by  Lord 
Midleton ;  with  him  were  Lords  Mayo  and  Oranmore, 
representing  the  Irish  peers.  The  Irish  Linionist  Alliance 
had  sent  Mr.  Stewart,  a  great  land-agent,  and  Mr.  Andrew 
Jameson  (whose  name,  as  someone  said,  was  "  a  household 
word  written  in  letters  of  gold  throughout  Ireland  "). 
The  Chambers  of  Commerce  had  their  representatives 
from  Dublin,  Belfast  and  Cork. 

In  the  Ulster  group,  Mr.  Barrie,  M.P.,  acted  as  leader, 
Lord  Londonderry  as  secretary.  Of  the  rest.  Sir  George 
Clark,  chairman  of  Workman  and  Clark's  great  ship- 
building yard,  had  been  known  to  us  in  Parliament.  A 
Scot  by  birth,  with  a  life  of  thirty  years  spent  in  Belfast, 
during  which  time  he  had  seen  his  business  grow  from 
two  hundred  hands  to  ten  thousand,  he  knew  nothing 


272  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

of  Ireland  but  Belfast,  and  had  no  trace  of  Irish  feeling. 
In  this  he  stood  alone  ;  but  unhappily  no  man  carried 
more  weight  in  Belfast — with  the  possible  exception  of 
one  whom  few  of  us  outside  Ulster  knew  before  we  came 
to  that  body.  Mr.  Alexander  McDowell  was  a  solicitor 
by  profession,  the  adviser  of  policy  to  all  the  business 
men  of  Belfast.  From  the  first  day  of  our  meeting  he 
stood  out  by  sheer  weight  of  brain  and  personality.  He 
was  to  some  of  us  the  surprise  of  that  assembly,  and 
made  us  realize  how  little  part  we  had  in  Ulster  when 
the  existence  of  such  a  man  could  be  an  unknown  factor 
to  us. 

Mr.  Pollock,  President  of  the  Belfast  Chamber  of 
Commerce,  was  also  new  to  us,  and  was  destined  to  play 
a  prominent  part  in  our  affairs.  With  the  Catholic 
prelates  sat  the  two  Archbishops  of  the  Church  of  Ire- 
land— Dr.  Crozier  and  Dr.  Bernard — to  both  of  whom 
the  democratic  constitution  of  their  Church  had  given 
great  experience  in  management  of  business  and  dis- 
cussion. Dr.  MacDermott,  Moderator  of  the  Presby- 
terian General  Assembly,  was  the  official  head  of  his 
Church  for  the  year  only  and  had  not  equal  knowledge 
of  administration.  An  orator,  M-ith  a  touch  of  the 
enthusiast  in  his  temperament,  he  was  a  simple  and  sym- 
pathetic figure  ;  vehement  in  his  political  faith,  yet 
responsive  to  all  the  human  charities  and  deeply  a  lover 
of  his  country.  There  was  no  better  representative 
there  of  Ulster,  of  the  Ulster  difficulty— at  once  so 
separate  from  and  so  akin  to  the  rest  of  Ireland. 

The  Government  nominees  included,  as  was  only 
natural,  the  most  personally  distinguished  group.  First 
of  them  should  be  named  the  Provost  of  Trinity,  Dr. 
Mahaffy,  under  whose  segis  we  assembled — a  great 
scholar  and  a  great  Irishman.  He  brought  with  him 
an  element  of  independent  unregimented  political  thought 
— often  freakish  in  expression,  but  based  on  a  vast  know- 
ledge of  men  and  countries.     In  a  more  practical  sense, 


THE   CONVENTION   AND  THE   END         273 

Lord  MacDonnell  and  Lord  Dunraven  were  our  chief 
political  theorists,  devisers  by  temperament  of  consti- 
tutional machinery.  Lord  MacDonnell's  repute  as  an 
administrator,  Lord  Dunraven's  as  a  leading  figure  in 
the  Land  Conference,  gave  weight  to  whatever  came 
from  them.  Lord  Granard,  who  sat  with  them,  was  a 
Catholic  peer  who  had  commanded  a  battalion  of  the 
Royal  Irish  Regiment  in  the  Tenth  Division  and  had 
held  offices  in  Mr.  Asquith's  Government.  He  had  now 
the  brilliant  idea  of  reopening  for  the  period  of  the  Con- 
vention one  of  the  most  beautiful  eighteenth-century 
dwellings,  Ely  House,  and  making  it  a  centre  of  hospit- 
ality and  a  meeting-place  for  friendly  outside  intercourse. 
Few  more  useful  assistances  were  rendered  to  our  purpose, 
and  certainly  none  more  pleasant. 

Lord  Desart,  a  distinguished  lawj^er,  acted  closelj^  with 
Lord  Midleton.  Sir  Bertram  Windle,  President  of  Uni- 
versity College,  was  another  of  Government's  choices — 
a  man  of  science  who  was  also  very  much  a  man  of  affairs. 
Another,  far  less  of  a  debater,  far  more  of  a  power,  was 
Mr.  William  Martin  Murphy,  Chairman  of  the  Dublin 
Tramways,  a  powerful  employer  of  labour  who  had 
headed  the  fight  against  Larkin  in  1913,  and  had  been 
mainly  responsible  for  the  character  of  the  employers' 
victory.  He  was  the  owner  of  the  most  widely  circu- 
lated Irish  paper,  the  Irish  Indepejident — which  stood  in 
journalism  for  what  Mr.  Healy  represented  in  Parlia- 
ment— an  envenomed  Nationalist  opposition  to  the 
Parliamentary  party. 

Mr.  Edward  Lysaght,  the  son  of  a  great  manufacturer 
in  South  Wales,  combined  like  his  father  an  aptitude 
for  literature  and  for  business  ;  he  wrote  books,  he  was 
concerned  in  a  publishing  venture,  but  he  was  chiefly 
interested  in  his  farm  in  county  Clare — where  he  had 
voted  for  de  Valera,  He  had  been  chosen  deliberately 
as  a  link  with  Sinn  Fein.  It  stamped  an  aspect  of  the 
Convention   that   he   was   the  youngest   man   there — for 

19 


274  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

lie  would  not  have  been  noticeably  young  in  the  House 
of  Commons.  We  were  a  middle-aged  assembly.  Another 
link,  though  not  so  explicit,  with  Republican  Ireland 
was  Mr.  George  Russell,  "  A.E.,"  poet,  writer  on  co- 
operative economics,  a  mystic,  with  all  a  mystic's  shrewd- 
ness, an  orator  with  much  personal  magnetism.  Lastly, 
there  was  Sir  Horace  Plunkett,  perhaps  the  onlj^  member 
of  the  Convention  except  Redmond  whose  name  would 
have  occurred  to  every  Irishman  as  indispensably  necessary. 

Two  other  personages  should  be  noted.  Mr.  Walter 
MacMurrough  Kavanagh,  Chairman  of  the  Carlow  County 
Council,  was  by  tradition  and  training  a  strong  Unionist, 
by  inheritance  the  representative  of  one  of  the  old  Irish 
princely  families.  He  had  been  elected  to  the  Vice- 
Chairmanship  of  his  County  Council  while  still  a  LTnionist ; 
later,  he  adhered  to  Lord  Dunraven's  projDosals  of  devo- 
lution, but  finding  no  rest  in  a  half-way  house,  came  into 
full  support  of  Redmond  and  for  some  time  was  a  member 
of  our  party  ;  by  temperament  deei>ly  conservative,  he 
was  in  no  way  separated  by  that  from  many  of  the  ablest 
Nationalists,  lay  and  ecclesiastic.  As  a  speaker  he  had 
few  equals  in  the  Convention ;  no  man  there,  indeed, 
except  Redmond,  could  throw  equal  passion  into  the 
plea  of  urgency  for  a  settlement,  for  I  think  no  other 
man  felt  it  with  such  earnestness. 

Captain  Doran,  Chairman  of  the  Louth  Council,  was 
on  his  waj'  back  to  France  when  the  summons  to  the 
Convention  stopped  him.  A  Methodist,  he  was  divided 
by  religion  from  his  neighbours  in  County  Louth  :  but 
that  did  not  stop  them  from  putting  this  prosperous  and 
capable  farmer,  working  his  land  on  the  most  modern 
methods,  into  the  Chair  of  their  County  Council.  Before 
the  war,  when  the  Larne  gun-running  took  place,  he 
decided  that  matters  looked  serious,  called  his  friends 
together  and  formed  a  company  of  Volunteers,  who 
might  be  needed  to  protect  themselves  or  to  protect 
other    Nationalists    across    the    adjacent    Ulster    border. 


THE   CONVENTION  AND   THE   END         275 

After  the  war  had  broken  out  and  the  Home  Rule  Act 
was  passed,  and  Redmond  had  launched  his  appeal,  this 
country  farmer,  then  aged  fifty,  made  his  way  to  Mallow 
and  asked  General  Parsons  to  accept  him  as  a  recruit. 
He  was  accepted,  and  very  shortly  given  a  commission 
in  the  Dublin  Fusiliers.  Out  of  his  local  Volunteers  he 
took  seventy-five  into  the  Army  with  him.  He  was  with 
the  Sixteenth  Division  from  its  landing  in  France  till  after 
the  day  of  Messines,  commanding  his  company.  All  this 
gave  him  an  authority  in  an  assembly  where  all  voices 
were  in  support  of  the  war,  and  more  particularly  in  an 
appeal  to  Ulster ;  and  with  this  advantage  went  an 
unusual  gift  of  frank  and  eloquent  speech,  linked  with 
a  fine  idealism. 

These  were  the  main  personal  elements  in  the  group 
that  came  together  on  July  25th — Mr.  Duke,  the  Chief 
Secretary,  acting  as  temporary  Chairman  and  Sir  Francis 
Hop  wood  (soon  to  become  Lord  Southborough)  having 
been  brought  over  as  Secretary.  Mr.  Duke  having  ad- 
dressed us  with  an  earnest  suavity,  we  were  told  to  select 
a  Chairman  :  and  on  the  motion  of  the  Primate,  Arch- 
bishop Crozier,  this  embarrassing  task  was  delegated  to 
a  committee  of  ten,  rapidly  told  off.  We  adjourned  for 
lunch,  and  on  reassembling  found  that  a  unanimous 
recommendation  named  Sir  Horace  Plunkett.  The  Ulster- 
men  had  expressed  a  willingness  to  accept  Redmond. 
This  he  refused  to  discuss  ;  but  he  was  put  into  the  Chair 
of  the  selecting  committee.  There  was  a  recommendation 
also  that  Sir  Francis  Hopwood  should  be  Secretary  to 
the  Convention.  Both  these  proposals  were  welcomed, 
and  we  dispersed  feeling  that  w^e  had  done  a  good 
day's  work. 

There  was,  however,  one  set-off  to  it.  When  the 
Selection  Committee  had  done  its  work,  its  members 
went  off  singly,  and  outside  the  gate  of  College  a  small 
group  of  ardent  patriots  were  waiting,  who  mobbed 
Redmond  on  the  way  to  his  hotel.     They  were  young, 


276  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

no  doubt ;  but  the  Republican  party  claimed  specially 
the  youth  of  Ireland  ;  and  these  lads  expressed  with  a 
simple  eloquence  very  much  what  was  said  by  older  and 
more  articulate  voices,  uttering  the  same  thought  in 
print.  It  is  worth  while  to  illustrate  here  the  attitude 
taken  towards  Redmond  by  much  of  Nationalist  Ireland, 
for  it  profoundly  influenced  Redmond's  attitude  and 
action  in  the  Convention.  I  take,  not  casual  and  partisan 
journalism,  but  a  passage  from  a  book  published  by  a 
distinguished  Irish  writer  who  had  never  publicly  attached 
himself  to  any  party.  Mr.  James  Stephens  was  in  Dublin 
during  the  insurrection ;  he  wrote  a  book  about  his 
own  personal  observation  of  it,  which  as  a  record  of 
observation  is  admirable.  But  when  Mr.  Stephens 
comes  to  emit  opinions,  here  is  what  he  has  to  say  : 

**  Why  it  happened  is  a  question  that  may  be  answered 
more  particularly.  It  happened  because  the  leader  of 
the  Irish  party  misrepresented  his  people  in  the  English 
House  of  Parliament.  On  the  day  of  the  declaration  of 
war  between  England  and  Germany  he  took  the  Irish 
case,  weighty  with  eight  centuries  of  history  and  tradition, 
and  he  threw  it  out  of  the  window.  He  pledged  Ireland 
to  a  particular  course  of  action,  and  he  had  no  authority 
to  give  this  pledge  and  he  had  no  guarantee  that  it 
would  be  met.  The  ramshackle  intelligence  of  his  party 
and  his  own  emotional  nature  betrayed  him  and  us  and 
England.  He  swore  Ireland  to  loyalty  as  if  he  had 
Ireland  in  his  pocket  and  could  answer  for  her.  Ireland 
has  never  been  disloyal  to  England,  not  even  at  this 
epoch,  because  she  has  never  been  loyal  to  England,  and 
the  profession  of  her  National  faith  has  been  un- 
wavering, has  been  known  to  every  English  person  alive, 
and  has  been  clamant  to  all  the  world  beside. 

"  Is  it  that  he  wanted  to  be  cheered  ?  He  could  very 
easily  have  stated  Ireland's  case  truthfully,  and  have 
proclaimed  a  benevolent  neutrality  (if  he  cared  to  use 
the  grandiloquent  words)  on  the  part  of  this  country. 


THE  CONVENTION  AND  THE  END        277 

He  would  have  gotten  his  cheers,  he  would  in  a  few 
months  have  gotten  Home  Rule  in  return  for  Irish  soldiers. 
He  would  have  received  politically  whatever  England 
could  have  safely  given  him.  But,  alas  !  these  careful- 
nesses did  not  chime  with  his  emotional  m.oment.  They 
were  not  magnificent  enough  for  one  who  felt  that  he 
was  talking  not  to  Ireland  or  to  England,  but  to  the 
whole  gaping  and  eager  earth,  and  so  he  pledged  his 
country's  credit  so  deeply  that  he  did  not  leave  her  even 
one  National  rag  to  cover  herself  with. 

"  After  a  lie,  truth  bursts  out,  and  it  is  no  longer  the 
radiant  and  serene  goddess  we  knew  or  hoped  for — it 
is  a  disease,  it  is  a  moral  syphilis,  and  will  ravage  until 
the  body  in  which  it  can  dwell  has  been  purged.  Mr. 
Redmond  told  the  lie,  and  he  is  answerable  to  England 
for  the  violence  she  had  to  be  guilty  of,  and  to  Ireland 
for  the  desolation  to  which  we  have  had  to  submit.  With- 
out his  lie  there  had  been  no  Insurrection,  without  it 
there  had  been  at  this  moment,  and  for  a  year  past,  an 
end  to  the  '  Irish  question.'  Ireland  must  in  ages  gone 
have  been  guilty  of  abominable  crimes,  or  she  could 
not  at  this  juncture  have  been  afflicted  with  a  John 
Redmond." 

Politicians  everywhere  need  to  grow  tough  skins ; 
but  Redmond,  though  he  was  a  veteran  in  politics,  had 
no  special  gift  that  way.  It  was  not  pleasant  for  the 
Nationalist  leader,  when  an  assembly  of  Irishmen  were 
called  together  to  attempt  the  framing  of  a  Constitution, 
to  find  himself  the  object,  and  the  sole  object,  of  public 
insult  ;  it  was  not  pleasant  for  him  to  feel  that  he  might 
at  any  time  be  subjected  to  a  renewal  of  this  experience 
in  the  streets  of  Ireland's  capital,  where  he  had  been 
acclaimed  as  a  hero  so  few  years  ago.  It  was  not  pleasant 
for  him  to  feel  that  whenever  he  took  up  a  book  or  paper 
dealing  with  Ireland  he  was  liable  to  come  upon  some 
outburst  such  as  the  one  which  I  have  quoted.  These 
things   were   pin-pricks,   yet   pin-pricks   administered  in 


278  JOHN  REDMOND'S   Lx\ST  YEARS 

public  ;  and  the  mere  effort  to  endure  such  things  without 
wincing  saps  a  man's  vitahty.  Behind  them  lay  the 
definite  repudiation  of  his  policy  in  election  after  election 
— for  Kilkenny  City  followed  the  example  of  Clare  and 
replaced  Pat  O'Brien  by  a  Sinn  Feiner.  He  was  repu- 
diated in  the  eye  of  the  world,  and  repudiated  with  every 
circumstance  of  contumely.  Plainly  in  the  Convention 
he  could  no  longer  claim  to  speak  for  Ireland  ;  that 
limited  gravely  his  power  to  serve. 

I  think,  however,  that  deep  in  his  heart  a  resentment, 
all  the  more  rankling  because  he  gave  it  no  voice,  prompted 
him  to  be  on  his  guard  against  lending  the  least  colour 
of  justification  to  any  plea  that  in  the  Convention  he 
had  sought  to  pledge  Ireland  without  due  mandate  or 
had  committed  anyone  but  himself.  All  that  was  per- 
sonal in  his  resources — his  labour,  his  experience,  his 
judgment,  his  eloquence — all  this  he  put  unreservedly  at 
the  Convention's  service  :  but  he  abstained,  and  I  think 
not  only  out  of  policy  but  as  the  result  of  silent  anger, 
from  making  the  least  use  of  that  authority  which  he 
still  possessed  and  which  he  might  easily  have  augmented. 
If  in  the  result  he  took  too  little  upon  him,  lest  anyone 
should  ever  say  he  had  taken  too  much,  and  if  because 
he  left  too  much  to  others  Ireland  was  the  loser,  Ireland 
must  bear  not  the  loss  only  but  the  blame. 

]Many  even  of  those  who  most  agreed  with  his  action 
had,  under  the  influence  and  events  of  these  years  and 
of  public  comments  on  these  events,  lost  confidence  in 
him.  Some  weeks  after  the  Convention  assembled,  a 
very  able  priest  said  to  me  that  he  regarded  Redmond 
as  "a  worn-out  man."  The  genuineness  of  his  regret 
was  proved  by  the  delight  with  which  he  heard  what  I 
could  tell  him.  Never  in  my  life  did  I  find  so  much  cause 
for  admiration  of  Redmond  as  in  the  early  stages — which 
were  in  many  ways  the  most  important — of  our  meetings. 
Never  at  any  time  did  I  know  him  exert  so  successfully 
his  charm  of  public  manner.    At  the  second  day's  meeting, 


THE   CONVENTION   AND   THE   END         279 

when  the  new  Chairman  took  up  his  place  and  function, 
there  were  several  small  points  to  be  settled,  each  capable 
of  creating  friction  ;  and  it  has  to  be  admitted  that  in 
the  technical  aspect  of  his  duty  8ir  Horace  Plunkett 
did  not  shine  :  business  quickly  became  involved.  For- 
tunately he  was  of  a  temper  to  welcome  help,  and  it  was 
quickly  to  hand.  Archbishop  Crozier  showed  himself 
to  be  accomplished,  resourceful,  and  most  tactful  on  all 
points  of  procedure  :  and  Redmond  then  for  the  first 
time  did  with  extraordinary  skill  'what  he  had  to  do  at 
many  stcages  later.  By  a  series  of  questions  to  the  Chair 
he  suggested  rather  than  recommended  a  way  of  clearing 
the  involved  issue  ;  and  all  this  was  done  with  a  pre- 
cision of  phrase  which  was  none  the  less  exact  because 
it  was  easy,  and  with  a  dignitj'  which  was  none  the  less 
impressive  because  it  had  no  pretence  to  effect.  His 
mastery  both  of  the  form  and  substance  of  procedure 
was  conspicuous.  One  of  the  ablest  among  the  Southern 
Unionists  said  to  me  in  these  days :  "  He  is  superb  :  ho 
does  not  seem  able  to  put  a  word  wrong." 

I  think  that  the  secret  of  his  hapjiiness  of  manner 
lay  simply  in  this,  that  within  the  Convention  he  was 
happy.  There  was  a  note  in  it  that  I  never  felt  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  even  when  he  was  at  his  best.  There 
he  always  spoke  as  if  almost  a  foreigner,  no  matter  among 
how  familiar  faces.  Here  he  was  among  his  own  country- 
men, and  for  the  first  time  in  his  life  in  an  assembly  in 
no  way  sectional.  For  from  the  first  it  was  plain  that, 
by  whatever  means,  there  had  been  gathered  a  compendium 
of  normal,  ordinary  Irish  life  :  farmer,  artisan,  peer, 
prelate,  landlord,  tenant,  shoj)keeper,  manufacturer — all 
were  there  in  pleasantly  familiar  types.  The  atmosj^here 
was  unlike  that  of  a  political  gathering  ;  it  resembled 
rather  some  casual  assemblage  where  all  sorts  of  men 
had  met  by  accident  and  conversed  without  prejudice. 
Everybody  met  somebody  whom  he  had  known  in  some 
quite  different  relation  of  life  and  with  whom  he  had  never 


280  JOHN   REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

looked  to  be  associated  in  any  such  task  as  the  framing 
of  a  Constitution.  It  was  all  oddly  haphazard,  full  of 
interest  and  surprises  ;  all  of  us  were  a  little  out  of  our 
bearings,  but  much  disposed  to  reconnoitre  in  the  spirit 
of  friendly  advance. 

iVfter  the  first  day  of  Sir  Horace  Plunkett's  chairman- 
ship there  was  an  adjournment  of  something  like  a  fort- 
night to  give  the  Chairman  and  secretariat  time  for 
preparation  :  and  in  this  interval  a  plan  of  action  was 
formed.  The  object  in  view  Mas  to  avoid  the  danger 
of  an  immediate  break  and  to  give  play  to  the  reconciling 
influences.  It  was  decided  to  begin  by  a  prolonged 
process  of  general  discussion,  in  which  men  could  express 
their  minds  freely  without  the  necessity  of  coming  to  an 
operative  decision  on  any  of  the  controversial  points, 
until  the  value  of  each  could  be  assessed  in  relation  to 
the  possibility  of  a  general  agreement. 

The  plan  adopted  was  to  discuss,  without  division 
taken,  the  schemes  which  had  been  submitted  by  members 
of  the  Convention  and  by  others.  Members  would  pro- 
pose and  expound  their  own  projects  :  for  the  exposition 
of  the  others  some  member  must  make  himself  responsible. 

At  this  "  presentation  stage  "  and  at  all  stages,  Red- 
mond absolutely  declined  to  put  forward  a  plan  in  his 
own  name.  This  was  not  only  from  temperamental 
reasons  :  there  was  an  official  obstacle.  He  was  an 
individual  member  of  the  Convention  :  but  he  was 
Chairman  of  the  Irish  party,  pledged  not  to  bind  it  with- 
out its  consent.  He  felt,  no  doubt,  that  any  detailed 
proposal  from  him  would  be  taken  as  binding  the  party, 
whom  he  could  not  consult  without  bringing  them  into 
the  secrets  of  the  Convention. 

But  this  attitude  of  self-abnegation  was  pushed  very 
far  by  him,  and  perhaps  too  far.  In  his  early  utterances 
he  deprecated  all  official  recognition  of  sections.  Yet 
from  the  moment  when  committees  came  to  be  appointed 
this   recognition   was   claimed ;     and   from   the   first  the 


THE  CONVENTION  AND  THE  END        281 

Ulster  group  maintained  a  compact  organization.  They 
had  their  own  chairman,  Mr.  Barrie,  and  their  secretary  ; 
they  secured  a  committee-room  for  their  own  purposes  ; 
they  voted  solidly  as  one  man.  ^\11  this,  though  we  did 
not  know  it  at  first,  was  dictated  by  the  conditions  of 
their  attendance.  They  were  pledged  to  act  simply  as 
delegates,  who  must  submit  every  question  of  importance 
to  an  Advisory  Committee  in  Belfast — behind  which 
again  was  the  Ulster  Unionist  Council.  They  had  there- 
fore no  freedom  of  action  and  were  of  necessity  extremely 
guarded  in  speech. 

The  Southern  Unionists,  including  the  representatives 
of  the  Irish  peers,  were  also  organized  as  a  group  ;  bub 
they  came  to  the  Convention  with  much  fuller  powers. 
They  felt  themselves  bound  to  consider,  and  in  certain 
conditions  to  consult,  those  whom  they  represented ; 
but  they  were  free  to  originate  suggestions,  and  indivi- 
dually each  man  expressed  his  own  view.  But  they  too 
had  their  meeting-place  and  their  frequent  consultations. 

The  handful  of  Labour  men  also  met  and  discussed 
action,  though  they  were  not  organized  as  a  group  and 
did  not  feel  pledged  to  a  joint  course.  Each,  according 
to  his  own  lights,  represented  the  interests  of  Labour. 
Still,  they  met. 

The  only  group  which  had  no  common  centre  of  re- 
union was  that  of  the  Nationalists — a  majority  of  the 
whole  assembly.  This  included  the  representatives  of 
the  Irish  party  and  the  County  and  Urban  Councillors, 
all  of  whom  had  been  returned  as  its  supporters.  It 
included  also  the  four  representatives  of  the  hierarchy, 
every  one  of  whom  liad  been  either  actually  or  potentially 
a  part  of  Nationalist  Conventions,  and  of  whom  three  had 
been  most  prominent  supporters  of  the  general  organization. 

But  a  difficulty  existed  in  the  presence  of  other  per- 
sonages who  were  in  general  support  of  us,  but  who  outside 
the  Convention  belonged  to  a  different  category.  Lord 
Dunraven  was  a  Home  Ruler,  but  had  been  no  supporter 


282  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

of  the  Irish  i)arty.  Lord  MacDonnell  stood  much  nearer 
to  us,  but  was  a  power  in  his  om^i  right  and  had  never 
been  a  party  politician.  Mr.  Lysaght  had  voted  against 
us  in  Clare.  Mr.  Russell  had  very  often  attacked  the 
party  on  aspects  of  its  general  action.  Above  all,  there 
was  Mr.  W.  M.  Murphy,  who,  like  Mr.  Healy,  had  been 
at  one  time  a  member  of  the  Irish  party,  and  whose 
paper  had  for  long  been  in  nominal  support  of  its  purposes, 
but  who  had  throughout  recent  years  done  more  than  all 
forces  together  to  discredit  and  weaken  its  influence. 

All  of  these  five  men  were  Government  nominees,  as 
were  also  Lord  Granard  and  Sir  Bertram  Windle,  who 
in  different  ways  gave  Redmond  complete  and  most 
useful  backing.  It  would  have  been  possible  to  call 
together  a  group  consisting  of  men  who  had  been  members 
of  the  national  organization  which  would  have  excluded 
all  these  and  included  the  Bishops  ;  ^  but  Redmond  prob- 
ably felt  it  would  be  ungracious  to  do  this.  His  chief 
desire  was  to  avoid  all  recognition  of  party  and  still  more 
of  partisan  machinery.  His  conclusion  was  to  do  nothing  ; 
and  it  was  a  conclusion  to  which  he  was  prone  at  all 
times  when  he  did  not  see  his  way  clear.  This  tempera- 
mental disinclination  to  take  any  action  which  might 
create  difficulties  was  in  these  days  at  its  height  with 
him.  Since  the  spring  his  usually  perfect  health  had 
been  failing  ;  he  suffered  from  the  physical  inertia  which 
accompanies  the  growth  of  a  fatal  disease  ;  and  sorrow 
upon  sorrow,  rebuff'  upon  rebuff,  had  weakened  the 
resilience  of  his  mind.  It  was  not  that  he  lacked  courage 
or  confidence  in  his  own  judgment  ;  but  he  was  bound 
as  a  statesman  to  make  allowance  for  the  estimate  which 
others,  his  followers,  Avould  put  upon  that  judgment 
when  he  declared  it.  Sensitive  by  nature,  he  was  deeply 
aware  of  failure  which  had  resulted  from  the  most  dis- 
paraging of  causes — not  flat  rejection,  but  belated,  half- 

'  When  ultimately  we  did  meet,  theae  were  the  elements  which 
assembled. 


THE  CONVENTION  AND   THE   END        283 

hearted  and  blundering  adoption,  of  whatever  course  ho 
had  proposed.  He  overrated,  1  am  sure,  the  extent  to 
which  his  personal  position  had  been  depreciated  in  the 
minds  of  those  who  were  there.  It  was  true,  as  the 
event  was  to  prove,  that  he  could  no  longer  count  on 
unquestioning  sujDport  of  any  policy  simply  on  the  ground 
that  he  advocated  it  ;  but  any  opinion  which  he  pre- 
sented would  have  been  commended  not  only  bj^  the 
cogency  of  his  argument  but  by  an  old  esteem  for  his 
wisdom,  and,  above  and  beyond  this,  by  a  pergonal 
feeling  Men  would  have  inclined  to  his  side  not 
for  the  argument's  sake  only,  but  for  his  sake. 

There  was  fell,  too,  precisely  at  the  moment  when  it 
mattered  most,  the  defect  in  his  quality  as  leader.  He 
lacked  the  personal  touch.  It  was  not  that  he  would 
not,  but  that  he  could  not,  put  himself  into  contact  with 
the  individual  nunds  of  men.  He  owed  it,  I  think,  to 
the  rank  and  file  to  give  them  more  of  his  guidance  than 
they  actually  received.  He  was  a  genial  presence  when 
they  met  ;  but  of  confidential  discussion  upon  details 
I  am  sure  that  nothing  passed.  Had  he  called  the  group 
together,  had  he  spoken  his  mind  to  them  collectively, 
in  confidence,  things  would  in  all  ways  have  been  better. 
But  there  was  ingrained  in  him  a  sort  of  shyness,  a  repug- 
nance to  force  his  view  on  others  by  argument,  an  indis- 
position to  controversy,  which  was  his  limitation  ;  and 
all  this  was  at  this  time  accentuated  by  the  hurt  sense 
that  there  would  be  alwaj^s  in  men's  minds  a  memorj'^, 
not  of  the  hundred  times  when  his  wisdom  had  amply 
Justified  itself,  but  of  recent  occasions  when  he  had 
advised  them  and  the  result  was  not  what  he  foretold. 

To  sum  up,  then,  this  criticism — what  he  said  and 
did  publicly  in  the  Convention  could  hardl}^  by  stretch 
of  imagination  have  been  bettered.  But  outside  its 
sessions  he  did  not  handle  his  team.  On  the  balance, 
probably,  he  thought  it  better  to  leave  them  to  their  own 
devices  ;    but  his  temperament  weighed  in  that  decision. 


284  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

As  a  result,  the  County  Councillors  and  other  local  repre- 
sentatives used  to  hold  meetings  of  their  own.  They 
were  shrewd  and  capable  men  ;  but  in  the  matters  with 
which  we  had  to  deal  the  most  skilled  direction  was  neces- 
sary ;  and  there  was  never  a  man  more  capable  of  giving 
them  guidance  out  of  a  lifetime's  experience  than  was 
Redmond,  nor  one  from  whom  they  Mould  have  more 
willingly   accepted  instruction. 

Discussion  in  the  Convention  itself  was  not  of  great 
value  for  the  education  of  opinion,  because  men  naturally 
were  reluctant  to  get  up  and  state  precisely  their  indi- 
vidual diflficulties,  which  in  a  confidential  interchange 
of  views  might  have  been  shown  to  proceed  from  some 
defect  in  comprehension.  The  chief  value  in  the  debates 
lay  in  what  they  revealed  rather  than  what  thej^  imparted. 
One  fact  was  salient.  No  Nationalist  was  prepared  to 
recommend  acceptance  of  the  Home  Rule  Act  as  it  stood, 
though  some  of  its  most  vehement  assailants  adopted 
great  parts  of  its  framework.  Broadly  speaking,  National- 
ists wanted  for  Ireland  the  powers  which  were  possessed 
by  a  self-governing  Dominion,  but  were  content  to  leave 
all  control  of  defence  to  the  Imperial  authority  and  did 
not  press  any  demand  for  a  local  militia.  On  the  other 
hand,  there  was  strong  insistence  on  the  right  of  an  Irish 
Parliament  to  have  complete  power  of  taxation  within 
its  jurisdiction. 

It  was  manifest  that  the  financial  clauses  of  the  exist- 
ing Act  would  no  longer  apply.  They  were  framed  in 
view  of  a  situation  which  found  Ireland  contributing 
ten  millions  in  taxation  and  costing  twelve  to  administer. 
Now,  less  than  half  the  taxation  paid  the  cost  of  all  Irish 
services  and  the  balance  went  towards  the  war. 

It  was  also  evident  that  Nationalists  were  prepared 
to  make  concessions  to  the  minority  quite  inconsistent 
with  the  current  democratic  view  of  what  a  Constitution 
should  be.  The  Bishop  of  Raphoe,  for  instance,  expressed 
willingness  to  have  the  Irish  peers  as  an  Upper  House. 


BOSTON      oTlfF^ 


i-  AC 


THE  CONVENTION  AND  THE   END        285 

Lord  Midleton,  however,  for  the  Southern  Unionists, 
insisted  that  those  whom  he  spoke  for  must  have  a  voice 
in  the  House  of  Commons — however  they  got  it ;  and 
there  was  general  desire  to  give  it  them,  even  by  methods 
which  no  one  could  justify  for  general  application. 

In  short,  it  became  increasingly  clear  as  the  debates 
proceeded  that  we  could  come  to  an  arrangement  with 
Unionists  if  Lord  Midleton  represented  Unionism.  But 
he  did  not.  Ulster  was  there  ;  and  the  Ulstermen  made 
it  plain  that  their  business  was  to  hear  suggestions,  not 
to  put  them  forward.  Two  facts,  however,  emerged 
about  Ulster's  attitude.  The  first  was  that  in  coming 
to  the  Convention  the  Ulstermen  had  expected  to  nego- 
tiate on  the  basis  of  taking  the  Home  Rule  Act  as  the 
maximum  Nationalist  demand.  The  only  compromise 
which  they  had  contemplated  was  a  mean  term  between 
the  provisions  of  that  Act  and  Ulster's  demand  for  a 
continuance  of  the  legislative  Union  so  far  as  Ulster 
was  concerned.  The  second  was  that  Belfast  regarded 
as  ruinous  to  its  interests  any  possibility  of  a  tariff  war 
with  Great  Britain,  and  believed  that  if  Ireland  were 
given  the  power  to  fix  its  own  customs  duties  the  dominant 
farming  interest  would  seek  to  find  revenue  by  new  taxa- 
tion on  imports.  Hence,  the  proposal  to  give  Ireland 
full  fiscal  powers  could  not  be  acceptable  to  Ulster.  Here 
lay  the  main  rock  in  our  course. 

As  the  discussion  proceeded,  one  category  of  pro- 
posals was  summarily  dealt  with — those  which  contem- 
plated the  setting  up  of  some  provincial  authority 
intermediate  between  the  central  Parliament,  which  all 
postulated,  and  the  existing  local  bodies  in  the  counties. 
This  policy  did  not  lack  advocates.  But  the  County 
Councillors  were  solid  against  it  :  evidently  their  private 
meeting  discussed  and  decided  against  an  expedient 
which  they  held  would  detract  from  the  dignity  of  the 
central  Parliament  and  from  the  dignity  of  the  County 
Councils.    Those  who  defended  it  as  a  plan  which  might 


286  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST   YEARS 

meet  Ulster's  difficulty  got  no  backing  from  Ulster ; 
that  group  said  neither  for  nor  against  it.  In  the  rest 
of  the  assembly  there  was  a  strong  feeling  against  any- 
thing that  looked  like  partition  or  might  in  public  be 
called  partition.  Several  of  us  had  thought  in  advance 
that  this  was  the  most  likely  path  to  the  solution  ;  and 
looking  back,  I  think  it  ought  to  have  been  much  more 
fully  explored.     But  encouragement  was  lacking. 

Another  anticipation  proved  illusory.  We  all  realized 
that  in  the  circumstances  Ireland  could  come  to  a  finan- 
cial arrangement  with  Great  Britain  on  easier  terms  than 
at  any  time  in  her  history  ;  that  to  settle  at  once  would 
be  highly  profitable  ;  and  more  particularly,  that  we 
could  probably  secure  the  completion  of  land  purchase  as 
part  of  the  bargain.  It  was  thought  that  this  argument 
would  appeal  to  the  commercial  sense  of  Ulster.  We 
were  met  by  a  resolute  reiteration  that  Ulster  considered 
it  Ulster's  duty  and  Ireland's  duty  to  take  a  full  share, 
equally  with  the  rest  of  the  United  Kingdom,  in  all  the 
consequences  of  the  war — even  if  it  cost  them  their  last 
shilling  ;  and  Ulster  speakers  denounced  our  argument 
as  a  bribe.  Some  Nationalists  were  inclined  to  discount 
these  protestations,  yet  I  see  no  reason  to  doubt  their 
sincerity.  At  all  events,  no  one  disputed  that  it  was 
to  Ireland's  interest  financially  that  a  settlement  should 
be  made. 

It  is  quite  unnecessary  to  summarize  here  in  any  detail 
the  course  of  these  general  discussions  in  full  Convention, 
which  began  on  August  21st.  One  thing,  however, 
resulted  from  them  on  which  too  much  emphasis  cannot 
be  laid.  In  the  process  of  "  exploring  each  other's 
minds,"  as  the  phrase  went,  we  came  to  know  and  to 
like  one  another.  Later  in  the  year,  a  friend  of  mine, 
high  placed  in  the  LHster  Division,  but  not  an  Ulsterman 
by  upbringing  or  sympathy,  came  home  from  France. 
He  told  me  that  the  main  impression  on  the  minds  of 
Ulster  delegates  had  been  made  by  the  Nationalist  County 


THE   CONVENTION   AND  THE   END        287 

Councillors.  They  had  expected  noisy  demagogues  ;  they 
had  found  solid,  substantial  business  men,  many  of  them 
with  large  and  prosperous  concerns,  all  of  them  rather 
too  silent  than  too  vocal,  and  all  of  them  most  good- 
humoured  in  their  tolerance  of  dissent.  What  Willie 
Redmond  had  foretold  in  his  last  speech  was  coming  true  : 
Irishmen  brought  into  contact  with  one  another  in  the 
Convention,  as  other  Irishmen  had  been  brought  into 
contact  in  the  trenches,  and  no  longer  kept  apart  by 
those  unhappy  severances  which  run  through  ordinary 
Irish  life,  came  under  the  influence  of  that  fundamental 
fellowship,  deeiDer  than  all  divergence  of  politics  or  creed, 
which  draws  our  people  into  a  sense  of  a  common  bond. 

The  desire  to  bring  delegates  together  in  friendly  social 
intercourse  had  shown  itself  in  many  quarters.  The 
Viceregal  Lodge  pressed  invitations  on  us,  and  Redmond, 
though  in  the  circumstances  he  himself  would  go  to  no 
entertainment  anywhere,  expressed  his  wish  that  National- 
ists should  alter  their  traditional  attitude  and  accept 
what  was  offered  in  so  friendlj^  a  spirit.  But  the  first 
place  where  we  met  as  a  bod}^  with  informal  ease  was 
at  the  Mansion  House  as  guests  of  the  Lord  Mayor— a 
jiopular  figure  in  our  assembly. 

Next  daj'^  the  Lord  Mayor  of  Belfast  rose  at  the  adjourn- 
ment to  express  all  our  thanks,  and  to  insist  that  there 
should  be  a  session  in  Belfast,  where  he  could  return  the 
compliment.  Immediately,  there  came  another  proposal 
for  a  similar  visit  to  the  South  of  Ireland.  We  went  to 
Belfast  at  the  beginning  of  September,  and  the  attitude 
of  the  Ulster  members,  which  had  till  then  been  somewhat 
guarded  and  aloof,  changed  into  that  of  the  traditional 
Irish  hospitality.  They  showed  us  their  great  linen  mills 
and  other  huge  manufactories  ;  they  showed  us  the 
shipyards,  in  which  the  frames  of  monster  ships  lay 
cradled  in  gigantic  gantries,  works  of  architecture  as 
wonderful  in  their  vast  symmetry  as  any  cathedral,  and 
having  the  beauty  which  goes  with  any  perfect  design 


288  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

combining  lightness  and  strength.  Perhaps  the  most 
impressive  sight  of  all  was  the  disbandment  of  workmen 
from  the  yards.  Endless  lines  of  empty  tramcars  drawn 
up  on  the  quay  awaited  the  turn-out  of  some  ten 
thousand  artisans,  who  streamed  past  where  we  stood 
assembled ;  and  as  the  crowds  swept  along,  all  these 
eyes,  curious,  but  not  unfriendly,  scrutinized  us,  and 
one  word  was  in  all  their  mouths  as  they  came  up — 
**  Which  is  Redmond  ?     Where's  John  Redmond  ?  " 

A  fortnight  later  Cork  completed  what  Belfast  had 
begun  ;  and,  perhaps  because  Cork  is  less  strenuous, 
the  whole  atmosphere  there  was  even  friendlier.  It  had 
almost  the  quality  of  a  holiday  excursion,  for  we  assisted 
at  the  ancient  ceremony  by  which  the  Lord  Mayor  of 
Cork  asserts  his  jurisdiction  over  the  harbour  waters — 
proceeding  outside  the  protecting  headlands  and  flinging 
from  him  a  ceremonial  dart  outwards  to  the  sea.  This 
day,  however,  we  accomf)lished  the  ceremony  well  within 
the  limits  ;  we  passed  the  narrow  gateway  in  the  chain 
of  mines,  but  outside  that,  submarines  were  a  very  real 
menace,  and  the  Admiralty  cut  short  our  steamer's  voyage. 
We  were  none  the  less  festive  on  board. 

It  was  not  all  mere  holiday  in  Cork.  One  speech  in 
particular  at  this  meeting  impressed  the  whole  Convention. 
A  Southern  delegate  illustrated  from  his  personal  know- 
ledge how  cumbrous  and  uneconomic  were  the  dealings 
of  a  government  at  Westminster  with  the  meat  supply 
from  Ireland  ;  and  a  mass  of  complicated  and  important 
trade  detail  was  skilfully  linked  to  the  larger  issue  of 
war  interest  and  Imperial  interest  ;  there  was  genuine 
eloquence  as  well  as  commercial  shrewdness  in  this  dis- 
course. A  short  speech,  too,  from  one  of  the  Ulster  County 
Councillors  indicated  by  its  tone,  what  was  in  my  opinion 
the  general  sentiment,  that  as  a  result  of  these  preliminary 
discussions  almost  everybody  in  the  assembly  expected 
and  desired  an  effective  agreement. 

At  least  for  the  purposes  of  this  book,  and  perhaps 


THE  CONVENTION  AND  THE  END        289 

many  purposes,  the  trend  of  our  debates  can  be  best 
summarized  by  reproducing  Redmond's  main  contribution 
to  them.  He  intervened  on  the  first  day  when  Mr. 
Murphj-'s  scheme  was  proposed,  on  August  21st,  but 
only  with  a  few  welcoming  words,  and  to  emphasize  his 
view  that  we  were  all  there  to  accept  whatever  commanded 
most  support.  But  at  Belfast  on  September  5th  he  spoke 
fully  ;  and  I  do  not  think  his  speech  would  have  been 
materially  different  had  he  delivered  it  three  weeks  later 
in  Cork.  What  I  print  here  is  based  on  the  unusually 
full  notes  made  by  him,  so  full  that  they  admit  of  being 
treated  like  a  press  telegram,  and  read  clearly  when  small 
and  obvious  words  are  added.  The  manuscript  is  scored 
with  underlining,  single,  double  and  treble,  to  guide  the 
voice  in  reading  from  it  ;  it  has  interest  as  illustrating 
the  technical  devices  which  a  great  orator  employed  for 
a  special  occasion  ;  and  for  this  speech  he  spared  no 
effort.  I  thought,  then  as  always,  that  he  was  less  im- 
pressive and  less  effective  in  so  fully  prepared  an  oration 
than  when  he  was  putting  his  thought  into  the  form 
which  immediately  came  to  him.  But  as  a  document 
it  represents  beyond  doubt  his  considered  opinion  and 
his  most  deliberate  advice. 

Dealing  briefly  at  first  with  the  contention  that  the 
system  of  the  Union  had  been  a  success  and  should  not 
be  touched,  he  outlined  the  familiar  arguments.  But, 
as  he  said,  the  existence  of  the  Convention  was  the  final 
answer.  The  head  of  a  Coalition  Ministry  had  declared, 
without  dissent  from  any  of  his  Unionist  colleagues,  that 
Dublin  Castle  had  hopelessly  broken  down.  The  Prime 
Minister  of  another  Coalition,  mainly  Unionist  in  its 
composition,  had  set  up  this  assembly,  charging  it  to 
find  another  and  better  system  of  government. 

Beneficent  legislation  had  been  quoted.  Yes,  but  how 
was  it  attained  ? 

"  In  any  constitutionally  governed  country,  once  public 
opinion  is  converted  to  some  great  reform,  it  naturally 

20 


290  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

passes,  surely  and  easily,  though  perhaps  slowly,  into 
law.  In  Ireland,  after  Irish  public  opinion  has  made 
up  its  mind,  the  reformer  has  to  convert  the  public  opinion 
of  another  country  which  is  profoundly  ignorant  or  apa- 
thetic, and  unhappily  it  is  uncontrovertible  that  scarcely 
a  single  piece  of  beneficent  legislation  on  land,  or  any- 
thing else,  has  been  passed  since  the  Union  except  by 
long,  violent,  semi-revolutionary  agitation. 

**  Are  we  to  go  on  for  ever  upon  this  path  ?  Are  we 
to  go  back  into  the  region  of  perpetual  and  violent 
agitation  in  order  to  get  the  reforms  we  need  ?  Are 
we  never  to  be  allowed  to  have  peace  in  our 
country  ?  " 

He  passed  then  to  the  complaint  that  Ulster's  special 
case  had  not  been  sufficiently  considered. 

*'  The  man  who  would  hope  to  settle  this  great  problem 
without  special  consideration  of  the  special  case  of  Ulster 
would  indeed  be  a  fool.  Only  for  the  special  case  of 
Ulster  we  should  not  be  here  at  all.  Our  chief  business 
is  to  endeavour  to  satisfy  that  special  case. 

"  For  myself,  I  am  one  of  those  Nationalists  to  whom 
Mr.  Barrie  referred,  who  believe  that  the  co-operation 
of  Ulstermen  is  necessary  for  a  prosperous  and  free  Ire- 
land, and  there  are  no  lengths  consistent  with  common 
sense  and  reason  to  which  I  would  not  go  to  satisfy  their 
fears  and  doubts  and  objections. 

"  The  special  case  of  Ulster  as  put  before  us  was  this  : 
*  We  are  contented  under  the  Union,  we  have  prospered 
under  the  Union.  Therefore  from  our  particular  stand- 
point we  have  no  reason  to  ask  for  a  change.'  But  they 
declare  themselves  not  only  Ulstermen  but  Irishmen. 
They  admit  that  the  rest  of  Ireland  is  not  prosperous  as 
they  are,  and  is  not  contented  ;  and,  that  being  so,  they 
have  come  here  in  a  spirit  of  true  patriotism  to  see  what 
is  proposed  as  a  remedy  ;  and,  as  I  understand  it,  they 
only  stipulate  that  in  any  scheme  of  reform  their  rights 
and  interests  and  sentiments  shall  be  safeguarded  and 


THE  CONVENTION  AND  THE  END        291 

respected.  That  is  a  reasonable  and  patriotic  attitude, 
and  I  wish  most  heartily  and  most  sincerely  to  respond 
to  it. 

"  Now  let  me  say  what  are  the  main  objections  to 
these  schemes  which  have  emerged  from  the  debate. 
Some  may  be  regarded  as  more  particularly  affecting 
Ulster,  others  as  more  particularly  affecting  the  Southern 
Unionists,  but  all  of  them  taken  together  make  up  what 
I  maj'  call  the  Unionist  objection. 

**  The  Archbishop  of  Dublin  grouped  these  objections 
under  three  heads  : 

1.  Imperial  Security. 

2.  Fiscal  Security. 

3.  Security  for  Minorities. 

"  On  the  question  of  Imperial  Securitj%  objection  is 
taken  to  what  is  called  an  '  Independent '  Parliament. 

*'  It  is  supposed  that  what  is  called  Dominion  Home 
Rule  implies  an  '  Independent '  Parliament.  This  is  a 
complete  delusion.  There  is  only  one  Sovereign  and 
Independent  Parliament  in  the  Empire — the  Imperial 
Parliament  ;  its  supremacy  is  indefeasible  and  inalienable. 
Every  other  Parliament  in  the  Empire  is  subordinate, 
and  an  Irish  Parliament  must  be  subordinate. 

"  The  Imperial  Parliament  has  created  many  Parlia- 
ments and  given  to  them  power  to  deal  in  general  as 
they  wish  with  local  affairs,  but  it  never  parted  with  its 
own  overriding  authoritj^ — it  has  no  power  to  do  so — 
and  in  several  of  the  colonies  it  has  exercised  that  over- 
riding authority  from  time  to  time. 

'*  Gladstone  spoke  of  the  Irish  Parliament  which  he 
proposed  to  set  up  as  '  practically  independent  in  the 
exercise  of  its  statutory  functions.'  But  the  overriding 
authority  of  the  Imperial  Parliament  would  always  be 
there  in  the  background  to  arrest  injustice  or  ojDpression, 
just  as  it  is  in  regard  to  every  Dominion  Parliament  in 
the  Empire  to-day. 


2d2  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

"  That  position  was  specifically  laid  down  and  accepted 
by  Parnell  in  1886. 

"  Lord  Midleton  demands  that  the  rights  and  authority 
of  the  Crown  shall  be  preserved  and  safeguarded.  There 
is  no  difference  whatever  between  us  on  this,  and  no 
difficulty  can  arise  upon  it. 

"  As  to  the  control  of  Army  and  Navy,  no  one  suggests 
any  interference  with  the  Imperial  authority  over  the 
Army  and  the  Navy.  I  include  in  that  such  naval 
control  of  harbours  as  is  necessary  for  security. 

**  Captain  Gwynn  has  proposed  that  Ireland  should 
have  power  to  raise  a  force  for  home  defence.  In  other 
words,  to  pass  a  Territorial  Act  for  Ireland.  My  policy 
about  the  Volunteers  is  known  :  I  proposed  at  the  beginning 
of  the  war  that  the  Government  should  utilize  the  exist- 
ing Volunteer  forces  ;  and  had  this  proposal  been  acted 
on  in  1914  there  would  have  been  no  rebellion  in  1916. 
If  I  understand  Captain  Gwynn,  he  did  not  suggest  that 
Irish  Territorials  should  be  under  an  Irish  War  Office 
and  an  Irish  Minister  for  War,  but  that  in  his  opinion 
a  system  of  Irish  Territorials  was  desirable,  and  inasmuch 
as  the  English  Territorial  Acts  are  not  suitable  to  us, 
the  Irish  Parliament  should  be  given  the  power  to  raise 
under  Imperial  authority  a  force  for  itself  and  on  its 
own  lines. 

"  If  this  is  his  view,  I  agree  with  it.  But  this  is  a 
matter  on  which  no  one  would  think  of  breaking  off. 

"  Speaking  generally,  I  think  the  Archbishop  of  Dublin 
and  those  who  agree  with  him  may  take  it  for  granted 
that  upon  all  those  questions  which  he  grouped  under 
the  heading  of  Imperial  Security  there  would  be  little 
difficulty  in  arriving  at  an  agreement  with,  at  any  rate, 
men  like  myself. 

"  Now  let  me  deal  with  the  second  group  of  eubjects 
put  forward  by  the  Archbishop  of  Dublin  under  the 
heading  of  Fiscal  Security — or  a  reasonable  prospect  of 
national  prosperity. 


THE  CONVENTION  AND  THE  END        203 

*'  The  first  objection  is  to  what  is  called  fiscal  auto- 
nomy, although,  after  listening  most  carefully  to  his 
speeches,  it  seems  to  me  that  the  real  objection  is  not 
so  much  an  objection  to  fiscal  autonomy  as  establishing 
the  full  power  of  the  Irish  Parliament  over  the  collection 
and  imposition  of  Irish  taxes,  as  an  objection  to  giving 
that  Parliament  power  to  set  up  a  tariff  against  Great 
Britain." 

He  referred  then  at  length  to  the  Report  of  the  Primrose 
Committee  on  Irish  Finance,  dated  October  1911. »  That 
Committee  had  for  its  chairman  a  great  English  Civil 
Servant ;  three  of  its  members  were  famous  English 
financiers  ;  another  was  the  Professor  of  Political  Economj' 
at  Oxford.  Of  the  two  names  associated  closely  with 
Ireland,  one  was  Lord  Pirrie,  whose  fortune  had  been 
made  in  Belfast,  and  the  only  Irish  Nationalist  was  the 
Bishop  of  Ross.  They  had  reported  unanimously  for 
giving  to  Ireland  full  fiscal  powers.  "  We  tried  hard," 
Redmond  said,  "to  get  the  principle  of  their  Report 
adopted  in  framing  the  Bill  of  1912."  Government 
insisted  on  adhering  to  the  plan  of  "  contract  finance  " 
which  their  own  non-partisan  committee  of  experts  had 
explicitly  condemned. 

He  quoted  several  passages  from  the  weighty  argument 
by  which  the  Committee  had  justified  its  conclusions, 
especially  those  dealing  with  the  contention  that  the 
power  would  be  used  to  set  up  a  tariff  against  British 
goods. 

"  Ireland  is  not  a  nation  of  fools. 

*'  If  in  framing  a  new  Constitution  you  go  on  the 
assumption  that  every  power  you  confer  will  be  abused, 
it  would  be  far  better  to  desist  from  your  task  altogether, 
and  instead  of  increasing  the  powers  of  a  people  dead 
to  all  sense  of  responsibility  and  manifestly  unfit  for 
political  freedom,  you  had  better  disestablish  all  existing 

«  His  notes  here  are  only  references  to  quotationa.  I  supplement 
on  this  page  by  my  own  notes. — S.  G. 


204  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

forms  of  constitutional  government  and  advocate  the 
government  of  Ireland  as  a  Crown  Colony.  But  none  of 
us  so  distrust  our  people. 

"  Dr.  O'Donnell  has  proposed  a  solution  of  the  diffi- 
culty about  imposing  a  tariff  against  England  by  means 
of  a  Conference  between  the  two  nations.  Other  sug- 
gestions will  be  made.  Protection  may  be  found  for 
Ulster  by  giving  to  them  disproportionate  representation. 
It  may  be  found  in  the  power  of  the  Senate,  it  may  be 
found  in  the  power  to  suspend.  If  we  are  agreed  some- 
what on  the  general  lines  of  the  Primrose  Report,  the 
outstanding  difficulty  will  be  capable  of  adjustment. 

"  Sir  Crawford  McCuUagh  rightly  pointed  out  the 
terrible  burden  of  war  taxation,  which  is  at  present 
over  twenty  millions,  and  he  said  we  cannot  go  on  on 
those  lines,  and  we  must  get  back  to  pre-war  burdens 
or  the  country  will  be  ruined.     How  are  we  to  get  back  ? 

"  If  nothing  is  done  by  us,  and  the  war  goes  on,  as  it 
may,  for  some  years,  we  may  easily  be  paying  thirty, 
forty,  or  fifty  millions,  and  generations  to  come  will 
have  to  bear  a  crushing  load.  The  income  tax  is  certain 
to  be  raised,  and  excess  profits  also,  and  no  part  of  Ireland 
will  suffer  more  than  Ulster,  and  especially  Belfast. 

"  The  highest  interest  of  Ulster,  therefore,  is  a  speedy 
settlement  whereby  the  increase  of  war  taxation  will 
cease  and  Ireland's  contribution  to  Imperial  purposes 
will  either  disappear  or,  to  put  it  at  the  very  lowest,  be 
limited  and  stereotyped. 

"  Mr.  Knight  raised  the  question  of  land  purchase.  I 
agree  with  every  word  he  said,  but  what  is  the  difficulty  ? 
The  difficult}^  is  in  providing  the  additional  money  needed 
at  a  low  rate  of  interest.  As  part  of  a  settlement  I  feel 
quite  sure  we  could  obtain  the  completion  of  land  pur- 
chase on  satisfactory  terms.  Indeed,  I  have  the  highest 
authoritj'  for  the  statement  that  this  question  would 
be  regarded  as  an  essential  portion  of  a  settlement,  and 
that  a  most  generous  arrangement  would  be  made.    But 


THE  CONVENTION  AND  THE  END        296 

if  there  is  no  settlement,  do  j'ou  imagine  the  Treasury 
will  do  anything  to  help  us  ?  No.  I  fear  the  British 
Government  will  be  more  occupied  in  endeavouring  to 
deal  with  the  state  of  open  anarchy  in  Ireland  than 
in  making  great  financial  concessions  on  land  purchase. 
Mr.  Knight,  if  he  wants  purchase  completed,  had  better 
help  us  to  an  agreement. 

**  The  third  group  of  objections  mentioned  by  the 
Archbishop  of  Dublin  deals  with  Security  for  Minorities. 

"  On  this,  it  is  impossible  for  the  Convention  to  break 
down,  because  we  are  all  in  favour  of  the  object  in  view. 
It  is  a  mere  question  of  the  best  machinery  to  carry  out 
our  unanimous  desire  and  intention. 

**  Ulster  may  clearly  claim  a  representation  out  of 
proportion  to  her  numbers,  not  only,  I  admit,  in  the 
Senate,  but  in  the  lower  chamber.  Safeguards  of  the 
most  stringent  character  would  be  accepted,  at  any 
rate  by  me,  in  the  machinery  of  the  Constitution  to 
prevent  the  possibiHty  of  Ulster's  interest,  Ulster's  pros- 
perity and  Ulster's  sentiments  being  injured  or  over- 
ridden. 

"  For  Southern  Unionists,  the  case  is  unanswerable. 
They  must  get  proper  representation  in  both  Houses. 

**  Some  suggestions  have  been  made :  proportional 
representation ;  Mr.  Murphy's  proposal  of  a  special 
representation  for  property  ;  special  representation  for 
creeds,  and  finally  a  nominated  element  in  the  House 
of  Commons.  I  have  an  open  mind  on  them  all.  It 
may  be  none  of  these  will  be  found  wholly  satisfactory. 
But  where  there  is  a  will  there  is  a  way.  We  are  all 
agreed  it  must  be  done,  and  therefore  it  can  and  will 
be  done. 

**  In  none  of  these  objections,  and  they  are  the  chief 
ones  that  have  emerged  on  Imperial  security,  fiscal  security, 
and  security  of  minorities,  is  there  in  my  mind  any 
difficulty  in  coming  to  an  agreement,  if  we  are  really 
animated  by  the  desire  every  speaker  has  professed  to 


290  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

answer  the  appeal  of  the  Empire  ia  this  hour  of  her  dire 
extremity  by  removing  one  of  her  greatest  weaknesses 
and  dangers. 

"  We  were  told  by  Lord  Midleton  to  play  for  safety. 
What  is  safety  for  us  ?  What  is  safety  for  the  Empire  ? 
I  strongly  say  the  only  safety  is  a  settlement  of  this 
question. 

"  What  will  be  the  certain  effect  of  a  breakdown  ? 
No  one  could  fail  to  have  been  impressed  by  the  serious 
and  solemn  note  upon  which  the  Archbishop  of  Dublin 
concluded  his  speech.  He  reminded  you  this  was  not  a 
question  of  Ulster  and  the  rest  of  Ireland,  not  of  Catholic 
and  Protestant,  or  L^nionist  and  Nationalist :  it  was  a 
question  of  the  necessity  for  all  men  of  good  will,  all  men 
of  responsibility,  all  men  who  know  that  the  foundation 
of  freedom  is  the  maintenance  of  order,  to  join  hands  to 
protect  their  common  country  from  anarchy  and  chaos. 

"  The  Archbishop  spoke  of  Mr.  Lysaght's  speech  as 
a  threat.  No  one  here  will  be  moved  by  threats,  but 
let  us  not  be  mad  enough  to  shut  our  eyes  to  the  facts. 
Is  there  a  man  in  this  room  who  can  contemplate  without 
horror  the  immediate  future  of  Ireland  if  this  Convention 
fails  ?  For  my  part,  I  see  clearly  a  future  following  on 
our  failure  in  which  on  one  side  there  will  be  an  angered, 
if  you  like,  a  maddened  people,  with  no  responsible  control, 
and  on  the  other.  Government  ruling  by  the  point  of  the 
bayonet.  Between  these  two  forces  there  will  be  no 
place  for  a  Constitutional  party  or  for  men  like  myself. 

*'  That  would  be  the  effect  in  Ireland.  What  would 
be  the  effect  throughout  the  Empire  ? 

"  I  have  close  relations  with  statesmen  of  all  parties 
in  all  the  Dominions,  and  I  am  informed  that  twenty-five 
per  cent,  of  their  troops  are  of  Irish  birth  or  of  Irish 
parents,  and  that  they  have  practically  joined  because 
they  believed  the  Irish  problem  was  as  good  as  settled. 

"  What  has  happened  about  Ireland  has  caused  untold 
difficulties  in  every  Dominion.     Mr.  Holman,  the  Prime 


THE  CONVENTION  AND  THE   END        297 

Minister  of  New  South  Walea,  said  that  conscription  was 
defeated  by  the  Irish  vote.  Mr.  Hughes  said  the  same. 
Two  hundred  thousand  troops  have  been  lost  to  the 
Empire  by  the  feeling  of  disgust  at  the  failure  to 
settle  the  Irish  question.  It  has  been  the  same  in 
Canada.  Everywhere  a  breakdown  will  be  regarded  with 
dismay. 

"  What  will  be  the  effect  in  America  ?  The  position 
of  America  is  grave  and  dangerous.  I  have  close 
relations  with  many  Americans  of  high  position  and 
influence,  and  they  all  tell  me  the  same.  This  is  a  secret 
session,  and  I  can  repeat  what  they  say.  There  is  little 
or  no  enthusiasm  for  the  war.  Mind,  I  am  speaking  of 
Americans,  not  Irish  Americans.  The  apathy  is  largely 
due  to  distrust  of  England.  They  distrust  her  posing 
as  the  champion  of  small  nations  while  here  at  her  doors 
the  Irish  question  is  unsettled.  Lord  Midleton  says 
the  Americans  are  uninformed.  Perhaps  so  as  to  details. 
Perhaps  they  only  see  the  broad  effect.  But  how  does 
that  help  us  ?  The  fact  remains.  Ireland  is  the  only, 
or  the  chief,  cause  of  American  apathy  to-day.  This  is 
of  vital  importance.  Could  we  hope  to  win  the  war  if 
America  dropped  out  ?  Russia  has  gone.  The  President 
of  the  United  States  has  many  paciiist  men  around  him. 
Their  movement  is  strong.  Germany  is  abstaining  from 
outrages  that  would  raise  American  feeling.  I  say,  the 
danger  of  peace  proposals  which  we  could  not  accept 
being  offered  to  America  and  accepted  by  her  is  a  real 
and  a  very  serious  one. 

"  Hence  it  is  that  the  Government,  the  diplomatic 
service,  and  all  connected  with  our  foreign  affairs  are 
feverishly  anxious  as  to  the  result  of  our  deliberations. 
If  we  break  down  in  despair  and  helplessness,  God  only 
knows  how  terrible  and  far-reaching  may  be  the  conse- 
quence. 

"  Far  better  for  us  and  for  the  Empire  never  to  have 
met  than  to  have  met  and  failed  of  an  agreement. 


298  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

"  Finally,  what  would  be  the  effect  of  a  breakdown  at 
the  front  ? 

"  We  are  called  upon  on  all  sides  of  this  ancient  quarrel 
to  make  what  people  call  sacrifices — sacrifices  of  inherited 
predilections,  of  old-world  ideas,  and  of  ancient  shib- 
boleths, of  perhaps  ingrained  prejudice.  I  would  bo 
ashamed  to  speak  of  the  surrender  of  such  things  as 
sacrifices,  when  I  remember  the  kind  of  sacrifices  our 
brave  boys  have  made  and  are  making  this  very  hour 
while  we  are  safe  at  home  talking,  I  cannot  trust  myself 
to  speak  upon  this  matter.  Only  the  other  day,  once 
again  the  Ulster  Division  and  the  Sixteenth  Irish  Division, 
shoulder  to  shoulder,  have  fought  and  died  for  Ireland, 
The  full  story  is  not  j'et  known,  but  it  is  full  of  tragedy, 
of  heroism  and  of  glory.  Surely  they  deserve  some 
encouragement.  No  set  of  men  living  would  be  prouder 
and  happier  than  they  if  we  can  send  them  the  news  of 
a  settlement  of  this  question  which  will  relieve  them 
from  the  daily  shame  they  feel,  every  time  they  meet 
their  Allies,  in  the  consciousness  that  their  country, 
Ireland,  for  which  they  are  facing  death,  is  distracted 
and  disunited  and  a  source  of  reproach. 

"No,  we  must  come  to  a  settlement.  We  must  rise 
to  the  occasion — if  only  to  save  ourselves  from  a  lifelong 
remorse  for  wrecking  this  venture — for  what  the  historian 
of  the  future  would  describe  as  a  crime  against  the  Empire 
in  her  hour  of  deadliest  peril,  and  a  crime  against  the 
peace  and  happiness  of  our  own  beloved  and  long-sutfering 
country." 

One  result  of  this  speech  was  seen  at  once  in  an  utter- 
ance from  Mr.  Andrew  Jameson,  a  leading  figure  among 
the  Southern  Unionists.  He  said  at  once  that  Redmond 
had  convinced  him  that  all  the  difficulties  as  to  main- 
taining the  Imperial  connection  and  providing  safeguards 
for  minorities  could  and  would  bo  met.  The  fiscal 
difficulty  remained.  He  pressed  the  Lister  group  to 
come  to  our  assistanoe  and  depart  from  their  attitude 


THE  CONVENTION  AND  THE  END        299 

of  Bilence.  This  speech  went  further  towards  our  desire 
than  any  Unionist  had  previously  gone. 

In  a  later  debate  Mr.  Pollock  outlined  two  essentials 
of  the  Ulster  demand.  The  United  Kingdom  must 
remain  a  fiscal  unit ;  and  Ireland  must  be  represented 
at  Westminster,  If  these  points  were  conceded,  agree- 
ment, he  thought,  should  be  possible. 

On  the  whole,  as  discussion  grew  franker  and  more 
business-like,  relations  improved.  There  were  small 
passages  at  arms,  but  these  onlj''  served  to  show  how 
strong  was  the  general  desire  for  harmony.  One  of  my 
colleagues  said  that  he  did  not  know  what  to  make  of  a 
political  assembly  where  everyone  applauded  when  you 
got  up,  and  applauded  when  you  sat  down,  and  never 
interrupted  you.  Another  said  that  the  Convention 
was  the  only  society  in  Ireland  from  which  one  always 
came  away  cheered  up  :  and  this  was  so  generally  felt 
that  an  Ulster  speaker  reminded  us  that  the  atmosphere 
of  our  proceedings  was  i)l^asant  but  exceptional.  He 
warned  us  to  remember  that,  even  if  we  agreed,  either 
side  might  be  repudiated.  Yet  there  was  a  marked 
feeling  that  the  Convention,  and  the  tone  which  prevailed 
in  the  Convention,  had  done  good  in  the  country.  This 
was  admitted  by  the  Grand  Master  of  the  Orange  Order, 
Colonel  Wallace,  in  a  speech  which  led  to  an  important 
illustration  of  the  mutual  process  of  education,  for  it 
raised  with  great  frankness  the  issue  of  religious  differ- 
ences and  alluded  specially  to  the  recent  Papal  decrees 
over  which  so  much  controversy  had  raged.  The  Bishop 
of  Raphoe  rose  to  reply  and  expounded,  as  an  ex-pro- 
fessor of  Canon  Law,  the  true  bearing  of  these  documents. 
His  speech  was  a  masterpiece  ;  its  candour  and  its 
lucidity  commended  itself  to  all  hearers,  but  most  of 
all  to  the  Ulstermen,  who  applauded  at  once  Lord  Oran- 
more's  comment  that  the  odium  theologicum  had  been 
replaced  by  divina  caritas  ;  and  at  a  very  late  stage  in 
our  proceedings,  Mr.  Barrie  referred  back  to  this  speech 


300  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

of  the  Bishop's  as  one  of  the  things  which  they  would 
never  forget. 

The  Primate,  who  in  this  month  of  September  was 
one  of  the  hopeful  hearts  (*'  My  confidence  has  grown 
daily,"  he  said),  used  words  which  met  with  widespread 
response  :  "  We  can  never  leave  this  hall  and  speak  of 
men  whom  we  have  met  here  as  we  have  spoken  of  them 
in  the  past."  There  was  good  will  in  the  air — good  will 
to  each  other  and  to  the  enterprise.  At  the  close  of  the 
proceedings  in  Cork  the  Lord  Mayor  of  Belfast  moved 
a  vote  of  thanks  to  the  citizens  through  their  Lord  Mayor, 
and  he  closed  on  a  note  of  hope — anticipating  "  some- 
thing in  store  for  Ireland." 

Yet  already  these  anticipations  were  overcast.  During 
this  week,  while  all  seemed  going  so  well,  one  of  the  end- 
less unhappy  and  preventible  things  happened.  It  was 
from  Redmond  that  I  first  heard  the  news.  One  of  the 
Sinn  F^in  leaders  who  had  been  rearrested  on  suspicion 
after  the  amnesty  took  part  in  a  hunger-strike  as  a  protest 
against  being  subjected  to  the  conditions  imposed  on  a 
convicted  felon.  He  was  forcibly  fed  and  died  under 
the  process,  owing  to  heart-failure.  Redmond  told  me 
with  fury  how  he  liad  urged  again  and  again  on  the  Chief 
Secretary  the  possibility  of  some  such  calamity,  and  had 
urged  that  these  men  should  receive  the  treatment 
proper  in  any  case  to  political  prisoners,  but  above  all 
to  men  who  had  been  neither  convicted  nor  tried. 

The  result  was  immediately  seen  in  some  hostile  demon- 
strations in  Cork,  chiefly  against  Mr.  Devlin  and  Redmond. 
But  this  was  only  the  beginning.  On  the  following 
Sunday  the  body  of  the  dead  man,  Thomas  Ashe,  was 
carried  through  the  streets  of  Dublin  at  the  head  of  a 
vast  procession,  in  which  large  bodies  of  Volunteers, 
openly  defying  Government's  proclamation,  marched  in 
uniform  ;  and  he  was  buried  with  military  honours  and 
volleys  fired  over  his  grave.  With  all  this  breach  of 
the  law  Government  dared  not  interfere.    They  had  put 


THE  CONVENTION  AND  THE  END        301 

themselvea  in  the  wrong  ;  whether  they  prevented  the 
demonstration  or  permitted  it,  mischief  was  bound  to 
follow.  A  new  incitement  was  given  to  the  enthusiasm 
for  Sinn  F6in,  a  new  martyr  was  provided,  and  new 
hostility  was  raised  against  the  Convention,  for  whose 
success  Government  was  notoriously  anxious.  On  the 
other  hand,  Ulster  Unionist  opinion  was  violently  offended  ; 
they  were  scandalized  by  the  disregard  for  law  and  the 
impotence  of  constitutional  authority.  This  attitude, 
however  open  to  comments  based  on  their  own  recent 
history,  did  not  render  them  any  easier  to  deal  with. 
Above  all,  the  Ashe  incident  emphasized  the  presence 
in  Ireland  of  a  great  force  over  which  Redmond  had  no 
control  and  which  had  no  representative  in  the  Con- 
vention. How,  men  asked,  even  if  a  bargain  could 
be  made  with  Constitutional  Nationalists,  should  that 
covenant  be  carried  into  effect  ? 


Ill 

The  Cork  visit  marks  the  close  of  the  first  stage  in  the 
history  of  the  Convention.  At  the  opening  of  our 
session  there  it  was  decided  to  appoint  a  Grand  Com- 
mittee of  twenty,  whose  task  should  be,  "  if  possible,  to 
prepare  a  scheme  for  submission  to  the  Convention, 
which  would  meet  the  views  and  difficulties  expressed 
by  the  different  speeches  during  the  course  of  the  debate." 
The  Convention  itself,  after  its  deliberations  of  that  week, 
would  adjourn  until  the  Committee  was  in  a  position 
to  report.  This  second  stage,  purely  of  committee  work, 
was  to  last  much  longer  than  anyone  anticipated  :  the 
Convention  did  not  reassemble  till  the  week  before 
Christmas.  If  that  length  of  adjournment  had  been 
foreseen,  the  Committee  would  never  have  been  appointed. 

Mr.  Lysaght  in  his  first  address  to  the  Convention  had 
pressed  upon  us  the  view  that  Sinn  Fein  could  b«  won. 


802  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

But  he  warned  us  also  (with  such  emphasis  that  some 
speakers  afterwards  resented  it  as  a  threat)  that  if  the 
Convention  produced  no  result,  or  an  unacceptable  result, 
or  provoked  suspicion  by  delay,  the  result  would  be  a 
revolution.  Already  impatience  was  growing.  We  could 
publish  no  account  of  our  proceedings  :  but  it  became 
known  inevitabl}''  that  we  had  not  as  yet  reached  one 
operative  conclusion  in  our  task  of  Constitution  building. 

At  Cork,  Sir  Horace  Plunkett  made  an  encouraging 
speech  at  the  public  luncheon  ;  he  announced  the  appoint- 
ment of  our  Committee,  which  certainly  looked  like  busi- 
ness. But  only  when  we  got  to  detail  did  men  fully 
realize  the  difficulties  and  the  embarrassing  nature  of 
the  position. 

The  Ashe  affair  had  done  more  harm  than  we  knew. 
When  the  Primate  was  making  the  hopeful  speech  from 
which  a  few  words  have  already  been  quoted,  he  spoke 
also  of  our  experience  as  having  been  a  process  of  mutual 
education,  which  we  needed  to  extend  beyond  our  own 
assembly.  He  promised  his  help  in  this,  and  it  was 
felt  that  Ulstermen  generally  were  on  their  honour  to 
report  well  of  what  they  commended  in  our  presence. 
They  were,  it  seems,  at  least  as  good  as  their  word  ;  the 
Committee  behind  them  was  favourably  impressed,  and 
when  we  went  to  Cork — so  I  have  been  informed — the 
question  of  giving  the  delegates  full  powers  to  negotiate 
was  under  discussion.  But  this  mood  was  dissipated  by 
the  angry  temper  in  all  sections  which  arose  out  of  the 
imprisonments,  the  hunger-strikes,  the  penalties  imposed, 
and  the  successive  concessions  to  violent  resistance. 

To  this  was  added  a  new  cause  of  quarrel.  The  Fran- 
chise Bill  was  now  coming  before  the  House  of  Commons  ; 
and  under  the  provisions  agreed  to  by  the  Speaker's 
Conference,  extension  of  the  franchise  was  to  be  applied 
in  Ireland,  but  there  was  to  be  no  redistribution.  This 
proposal  was  not  unreasonable,  since  the  Home  Rule 
Act  was  now  a  statute  and  under  it  new  and   properly 


THE  CONVENTION  AND  THE  END        303 

distributed  constituencies  were  scheduled ;  while  over 
and  above  this  the  Convention  was  in  existence  to  occupy 
itself  with  the  matter. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  existing  distribution  of  seats 
was  hard  on  Unionist  Ulster  :  the  great  mass  of  popu- 
lation in  and  about  Belfast  was  under-represented. 
Ulstermen  said  that  while  Nationalists  professed  great 
desire  to  give  favour  to  minorities,  in  reality  they  per- 
sisted in  keeping  their  political  opponents  at  an  unfair 
disadvantage.  There  was  no  more  question  of  enlarging 
the  delegates'  authority  in  Convention  :  the  Advisory 
Committee  hardened  their  attitude,  and  it  was  our  task 
to  convince  a  body  which  could  not  hear  our  arguments 
at  first  hand.  Decisions  lay  with  Ulstermen  in  Belfast, 
not  in  the  Convention — that  is  to  say,  not  subject  to 
the  daily,  hourly,  prompting  to  remember  that  they  were 
not  only  Ulstermen  but  Irishmen,  which  arose  from 
friendly  intercourse  with  their  fellow-delegates. 

The  Grand  Committee  of  twenty,  representing  all 
groups,  met  on  October  11th.  Sir  Horace  Plunkett  had 
in  advance  begged  Redmond  to  undertake  the  presenta- 
tion of  a  scheme  which  would  serve  as  a  basis  for  dis- 
cussion. Redmond  declined,  on  the  ground  that  the 
initiative  should  come  from  someone  who  was  not  there 
as  a  politician  ;  but  he  admitted  that  the  onus  of  making 
a  proposal  was  on  Home  Rulers.  Dr.  O'Donnell,  though 
an  office-bearer  in  the  United  Irish  League,  was  present 
as  a  representative  of  the  hierarchy  ;  he  was  charged 
with  the  task.  He  had  been  throughout  a  strong  advo- 
cate of  claiming  for  Ireland  all  the  powers  possessed 
by  any  of  the  Dominions,  with  limitations  on  the  military 
side  ;  he  had  also  been  forward  in  his  desire  to  give  wholly 
exceptional  rights  of  representation  to  minorities. 

But  when  we  got  into  Committee  one  man  immediately 
took  the  lead.  Sir  Alexander  McDowell »  had  not  spoken 
in  any  debate  ;    there  is  reason  to  believe  that  he  was 

'  He  was  knighted   for   his  work  in  connection  with  the  war. 


304  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

glad  not  to  commit  himself  in  advance  before  the  moment 
when  his  special  gift  might  come  into  play.  All  his  life 
he  had  been  carrying  through  agreements  between  con- 
flicting interests  :  he  was  a  great  mediator  and  negotiator. 
Now,  he  advocated  what  was,  in  strictness,  an  irregu- 
larity. A  task  had  been  delegated  to  us  :  he  asked  us 
to  delegate  it  again  to  a  smaller  group.  The  whole  case, 
he  said,  had  been  fully  opened  up  ;  further  debate  would 
be  no  use  ;  we  all  knew  all  the  arguments.  He  deprecated 
formal  procedure  ;  it  was  plainly  a  family  quarrel,  and 
we  should  treat  it  in  that  spirit.  Honestly,  he  said,  ho 
should  be  sorry  if  the  Convention  failed.  Ulster  had  no 
fault  to  find  with  the  Union  ;  but  they  were  living  next 
door  to  a  house  already  in  flames. 

That  was  the  general  tone,  but  it  would  be  difficult 
to  convey  the  impression  of  experience  and  authority 
which  his  manner  left :  and  Redmond  supported  him. 
It  was  plain  that  the  two  men  would  understand  each 
other.  In  the  upshot  their  view  prevailed  ;  Redmond, 
Mr.  Barrie  and  Lord  Midleton  were  instructed  to  suggest 
names,  and  after  an  interval  they  came  back  with  a  list 
of  nine.  Lord  Midleton  was  for  the  Southern  Unionists  ; 
Mr.  Barrie,  Lord  Londonderry  and  Sir  Alexander  McDowell 
for  the  Northern  ;  Redmond,  Mr.  Devlin  and  Bishop 
O'Donnell  represented  the  parliamentary  Nationalists, 
and  to  them  were  added  Mr.  W.  M.  Murphy  and  Mr. 
George  Russell. 

This  left  eleven  of  us  unemployed,  and  some  days  later 
we  were  formed  into  three  sub-committees,  the  first 
dealing  with  the  question  of  Electoral  Reform  and  the 
composition  of  an  Irish  Parliament  ;  the  second  with 
Land  Purchase,  and  the  third  with  a  possible  Territorial 
Force  and  the  Police.  But  the  marrow  of  the  business 
rested  with  the  original  sub-committee  of  nine. 

They,  however,  could  not  get  rapidly  to  work  ;  other 
affairs  pulled  them  in  different  directions.  Redmond 
was  forced  to  go  to  Westminster,  where  the  Franchise 


THE  CONVENTION  AND  THE  END        305 

Bill  was  coming  on  ;  moreover,  the  Irish  party  felt  that 
it  must  raise  the  question  of  Irish  administration. 

As  our  leader,  he  was  obliged  to  speak  on  both  matters. 
His  reply  to  the  Ulster  amendment  proposing  to  extend 
redistribution  to  Ireland  was  that  this  departed  from  the 
compromise  reached  at  the  Speaker's  Conference,  and 
moreover  ignored  the  existence  of  the  Convention.  He 
spoke  with  studied  brevity  and  avoidance  of  party  spirit : 
but  the  debate  became  a  wrangle.  Mr.  Barrie  brought 
back  into  it  some  of  the  Convention's  friendlier  atmo- 
sphere ;  but  his  argument  was  that  in  the  interests  of 
the  Convention  this  concession  should  be  made. 

The  second  debate,  on  October  23rd,  was  inevitably 
contentious  :  it  deplored  the  policy  being  pursued  by 
the  Irish  Executive  and  the  Irish  military  authorities 
"  at  a  time  when  the  highest  interests  of  Ireland  and 
the  Empire  demand  the  creation  of  an  atmosphere 
favourable  to  the  Convention."  Redmond  had  an  easy 
task  in  convicting  the  Government's  action  of  incoherence 
and  of  blundering  provocation — but  to  do  this  was  of 
no  advantage  to  his  main  purpose,  which  he  served  as 
best  he  could  by  a  side-wind,  eulogizing  the  temper  of 
the  Convention  and  specially  the  "  sincere  desire  for  a 
reasonable  settlement  "  shown  by  the  Ukter  delegates. 

Still,  at  the  best,  it  was  impossible  for  him  not  to  feel 
that  the  reaction  of  a  debate  which  could  not  be  kept 
in  the  tone  on  which  he  started  it  must  be  unfavourable 
to  the  meetings  of  the  Nine  which  were  about  to  take 
place.  He  was  to  go  in  to  negotiate  a  settlement  for 
his  country  while  the  voices  of  faction  were  yelping  at 
his  heels  all  over  Ireland,  and  all  the  forces  of  reconcilia- 
tion which  he  had  brought  into  play  were  neutralized 
and  sterilized. 

A  debate  of  these  days  gave  him  a  happier  occasion 
to  intervene  than  the  domestic  bickerings  in  which  he 
had  been  forced  to  take  part ;  yet  even  in  this  the  note 
of    sadness    predominated.     On    October    29th,   when    a 

21 


306  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

vote  of  thanks  was  proposed  to  the  Navy,  Army  and 
Mercantile  Marine,  he  joined  his  voice  to  that  of  other 
leaders  of  parties,  to  emphasize,  as  he  said,  that  they 
spoke  from  an  absolutely  unanimous  House  of  Commons. 
He  recalled  the  exploits  of  Irish  troops  and  dwelt  again 
on  the  presence  of  a  large  Irish  element  in  the  Canadian 
and  Anzac  Divisions.  But  his  reference  was  chiefly  to 
those  Nationalist  Irish  Brigades,  who  had  remained  true, 
he  said,  to  the  old  motto  of  the  Brigade  of  Fontenoy, 
Semper  el  ubiqne  fidelis.  These  men  had  known  in  the 
midst  of  their  privations  and  sufferings  a  new  and  poignant 
feeling  of  anguish  :  they  had  seen  "  a  section  at  any  rate 
of  their  countrymen  "  repudiate  the  view  that  in  serving 
as  they  served  they  were  fighting  for  Ireland,  for  her 
happiness,  for  her  prosperity  and  her  liberty. 

"  I  wish  it  were  possible  for  me  to  speak  a  word  to 
every  one  of  those  men.  If  my  words  could  reach  them, 
I  would  say  to  every  one  of  them  that  they  need  have 
no  misgiving,  that  they  were  right  from  the  first,  that 
time  will  vindicate  them,  that  time  will  show  that  while 
fighting  for  liberty  and  civilization  in  Europe  they  are 
also  fighting  for  civilization  and  liberty  in  their  own  land. 
I  would  like  to  say  to  every  one  of  them,  in  addition,  that 
even  at  this  moment,  when  ephemeral  causes  have  con- 
fused and  disturbed  Irish  opinion,  they  are  regarded 
with  feelings  of  the  deepest  pride  and  gratitude  by  the 
great  bulk  of  the  Irish  race  and  by  all  that  is  best  in 
every  creed  and  class  in  Ireland." 

The  Irish  Divisions  had  once  and  again  been  engaged 
shoulder  to  shoulder,  but  this  time  with  very  different 
fortune,  in  the  third  battle  of  Ypres  ;  yet,  win  or  lose, 
they  won  or  lost  together.  In  that  same  fighting 
Redmond's  own  son  had  earned  special  honour ;  the 
Distinguished  Service  Order  was  bestowed  on  him  for 
holding  up  a  broken  line  with  his  company  of  the  Irish 
Guards.  At  a  happier  time  this  news  would  have 
been  received  with  enthusiasm  all  over  Ireland  ;    now, 


THE  CONVENTION  AND  THE  END        307 

the    most     one    could   say   was  that   it   delighted   the 
Convention. 

It  would  be  quite  wrong,  however,  to  regard  Redmond's 
attitude  in  these  days  as  unhopeful.  The  first  meetings 
of  the  Nine  were  fruitful  of  much  agreement — conditional 
at  all  points  on  general  ratification.  But  the  true  spirit 
of  compromise  was  there.  So  far  as  concerned  the  pro- 
vision to  give  minorities  more  than  their  numerical  weight, 
it  was  agreed  that  there  should  be  two  Houses,  with 
powers  of  joint  session,  and  with  control  over  money 
bills  conceded  to  the  Upper  House.  In  the  Lower  House 
Unionists  should  (somehow)  get  forty  per  cent,  of  the 
representation  :  so  that  in  the  joint  session  the  influences 
would  be  equally  balanced. 

The  hitch  came  over  finance.  Nationalists  wanted 
complete  powers  of  taxation,  but  would  agree  to  a  treaty 
establishing  Free  Trade  between  the  two  countries  for  a 
long  period.  Ulster  wanted  a  common  fiscal  control  for 
Great  Britain  and  Ireland.  By  November  1st  a  complete 
deadlock  had  been  reached. 

On  that  date  the  Grand  Committee  met  to  take  stock 
informally  of  the  position,  especially  in  regard  to  the 
procedure  of  the  more  detailed  sub-committees,  and  to 
face  the  fact  that  a  grave  misfortune  had  befallen  us. 
Sir  Alexander  McDowell  had  been  prevented  by  illness 
from  attending  any  of  the  meetings.  He  had  no  further 
part  in  the  Convention's  work,  and  died  before  it  ended. 

Redmond  in  a  confidential  talk  spoke  of  his  absence 
as  lamentable.  The  two  had  arranged — on  the  Belfast 
man's  proposal — to  meet  for  private  interviews  before 
the  Nine  came  together.  Neither  had  control  of  the 
forces  for  which  he  spoke  ;  but  both  stood  out,  by  every- 
one's consent,  from  the  rest  of  the  assembly.  It  is  im- 
possible to  say  how  much  they  might  have  achieved 
had  they  come  to  an  understanding  ;  but  assuredly  no 
other  representative  of  the  North  spoke  with  the  same 
self-confidence  or  the  same  weight  of  personality  as  Sir 


308  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

Alexander  McDowell.  My  own  feeling  about  him — if  it 
be  worth  while  to  record  a  personal  impression — was 
that  he  was  a  man  with  the  instinct  for  carrying  big 
things  through — that  the  iDroblem  tempted  him,  as  a 
task  which  called  for  the  exertion  of  powers  which  he  was 
conscious  of  possessing.  In  losing  him  we  lost  certainly 
the  strongest  will  in  his  group,  perhaps  the  strongest  in 
the  Convention  ;  and  it  was  a  will  for  settlement.  It 
was,  too,  a  will  less  hampered  by  regard  for  public  opinion 
than  that  of  any  popularly  elected  representative  man 
can  be.  He  had,  I  think,  also  eminently  the  persuasive 
gift  which  is  not  only  inclined  to  give  and  take  but  can 
impart  that  disposition  to  others. 

Mr.  Pollock,  who  replaced  him,  was  an  able  man,  but 
singularly  lacking  in  this  quality.  He  held  his  own 
views  clearly  and  strongly,  but  his  method  of  exposition 
accentuated  differences  :  it  had  always  a  note  of  asperity, 
though  this  was  certainly  not  deliberate.  One  of  the 
pleasant  memories  which  remains  with  me  is  of  a  day 
when  debate  grew  acrimonious  and  hot  words  were  used. 
Mr.  Pollock  refused  to  reply  to  some  phrases  which  might 
have  been  regarded  as  taunts,  because,  he  said,  '*  I  have 
made  friendships  here  which  I  never  expected  to  make, 
and  I  value  them  too  much  to  risk  the  loss  of  them." 
That  friendly  temper,  combined  with  his  ability,  made 
him  a  valuable  member  of  this  Convention  :  but  for  the 
critical  work  of  bringing  men's  minds  together,  of  sifting 
the  essential  from  the  unessential,  he  was  a  bad  exchange 
for  Sir  Alexander  McDowell. 

Redmond  said  to  me  that  he  had  found  Mr.  Barrie 
much  more  conciliatory  than  in  the  earlier  and  public 
stages.  He  was  delighted  with  Lord  Midleton,  who  was, 
he  said,  "  showing  an  Irish  spirit  which  I  never  expected  "  ; 
— standing  up  for  the  claims  of  an  Irish  Parliament  if 
there  was  to  be  one.  In  the  discussion,  however,  one 
man,  Bishop  O'Donnell,  had  been  *'  head  and  shoulders 
above  everyone  else." 


THE  CONVENTION  AND  THE  END        309 

Argument  had  ranged  about  the  question  of  customs 
and  excise.  This  was  the  dividing  line.  But  when  at 
last  a  deadlock  was  definitely  reached,  the  Ulster  position 
was  stated  in  a  letter  which  refused  to  concede  to  an 
Irish  Parliament  the  control  of  either  direct  or  indirect 
taxation.  It  was  to  be  a  Parliament  with  no  taxing 
power  at  all. 

On  the  other  hand,  in  the  corresponding  document 
from  the  Nationalist  side,  the  importance  of  immediate 
and  full  fiscal  control  had  been  put  very  high. 

"  Self-government  does  not  exist,"  it  said,  "  where 
those  nominally  entrusted  with  affairs  of  government 
have  not  control  of  fiscal  and  economic  policy.  No 
nation  with  self-respect  could  accept  the  idea  that  while 
its  citizens  were  regarded  as  capable  of  creating  wealth 
they  were  regarded  as  incompetent  to  regulate  the  manner 
in  which  taxation  of  that  wealth  should  be  arranged, 
and  that  another  country  should  have  the  power  of  levy- 
ing and  collecting  taxes,  the  taxed  country  being  j)laced 
in  the  position  of  a  person  of  infirm  mind  whose  affairs 
are  regulated  by  trustees.  No  finality  could  be  looked 
for  in  such  an  arrangement,  not  even  a  temporary 
satisfaction." 

The  genesis  of  this  passage  should  be  told,  for  it  had 
importance  in  the  history  of  the  Convention  ;  and  also 
it  conveys  an  idea  of  the  limits  to  which  Redmond  carried 
self-effacement.  It  is  important  because  it  acted  on 
Ulster  like  a  red  rag  shown  to  a  bull.  Obviously,  if  this 
were  the  Nationalist  view,  then  the  Home  Rule  Act 
could  not  be  said  to  give  self-government — for  under 
its  system  of  contract  finance  Ireland  certainly  had  not 
control  of  her  fiscal  and  economic  policy.  A  measure 
accepted  with  enthusiasm  in  1912  was  now  regarded  as 
impossible  of  giving  "  even  a  temporary  satisfaction." 

What  had  happened  was  this.  The  Chairman  in  his 
tireless  efforts  to  bring  about  agreement  had  addressed 
two  set^  of  questions,  to  the  Nationalists  and  to  the 


310  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

Ulstermen  respectively,  by  answering  which  he  hoped 
they  might  clear  the  air.  The  direct  answers  for  the 
Nationalists  were  drafted  by  Mr.  Russell,  but  were  shown 
to  Redmond,  Mr.  Devlin  and  the  Bishop  of  Raphoe.  It 
was,  however,  suggested  that  as  an  addendum  a  sum- 
mary should  be  added.  Redmond  did  not  ask  to  see 
this  addition,  and  it  was  not  shown  to  him.  It  led  off 
with  the  paragraph  which  has  been  quoted.  The  fact  that 
he  allowed  anything  in  any  stage  of  such  a  negotiation 
to  go  out  in  his  name  without  his  own  revision  marks 
the  loosening  of  grip — a  tired  man. 

His  exertions  for  the  past  years,  the  past  ten  years 
at  least,  had  been  tremendous  :  they  had  been  redoubled 
from  1912  to  1916.  Towards  the  end,  one  resource  had 
been  failing  him — the  chief  of  all.  A  leader  when  he 
is  well  followed  gives  and  takes  ;  there  is  interchange 
of  energy.  For  more  than  a  year  now  Redmond  had 
lacked  the  moral  support,  the  almost  physical  stimulus, 
which  comes  from  the  ready  response  of  followers.  Labour 
at  no  time  came  easy  to  him,  there  was  much  inertia 
in  his  temperament ;  and  the  part  which  he  had  laid  out 
for  himself  in  the  Convention  as  merely  an  individual 
member  did  not  impose  on  him  the  same  unremitting 
vigilance  as  if  he  acted  as  leader.  Yet,  the  leadership 
was  his  ;  if  he  did  not  exercise  it,  no  one  else  could  ; 
and  this  incident  shows  that  his  abnegation  of  leadership 
was  not  a  mere  phrase. 

On  November  22nd  the  Grand  Committee  reassembled 
to  hear  the  report  from  the  Nine.  Lord  Southborough, 
who  had  presided  at  all  their  meetings,  detailed  the 
conclusions  which  had  been  reached  or  the  point  on 
which  they  had  broken  down. 

Then  followed  a  discussion  lasting  some  throe  daj^s, 
in  which  Ulstermen  and  Nationalists  reaffirmed  their 
positions.  Archbishop  Bernard,  the  Primate,  and  Lord 
MacDonnell  all  attempted  mediation.  Finally,  Lord 
Midleton,  who  described  the  position  as  **  a  stone  wall 


THE  CONVENTION  AND  THE  END        311 

on  each  side,"  announced  that  he  and  his  group  would 
put  before  the  Grand  Committee  certain  proposals  as 
a  via  media.  These  in  efiFect  conceded  to  an  Irish  Parlia- 
ment all  that  Nationalists  claimed,  subject  only  to  the 
reservation  that  customs  must  be  fixed  by  the  Imperial 
Parliament  and  the  produce  of  them  retained  as  Ireland's 
contribution    to    Imperial    services. 

At  this  point  our  work  was  interrupted  by  the  re- 
emergence  of  the  redistribution  question.  Redmond 
and  the  other  Irish  members  were  obliged  to  go  to  London 
and  assist  for  two  days  at  a  debate  in  the  worst  traditions 
of  the  House  of  Commons.  The  change  of  atmosphere 
was  extraordinary — and  the  accusations  of  ])ad  faith 
were  not  limited  to  what  passed  at  Westminster.  One 
virulent  speech  declared  that  the  Convention  had  no 
prospects,  never  had  any,  and  was  never  intended  to 
have  any.  This  was  accompanied  by  an  attack  on  the 
action  of  the  Ulster  group — based,  of  course,  on  hearsay. 
Those  of  us  who  felt  that  at  any  rate  the  Convention 
offered  a  better  hope  for  Ireland  than  any  which  now 
could  be  based  on  action  at  Westminster  j^leaded  for 
the  acceptance  of  a  proposal  which  Redmond  put  forward 
as  a  compromise — that  the  proposed  Irish  clauses  should 
be  dropped  from  the  main  Bill  and  the  Irish  matter 
dealt  with  in  a  separate  statute.  It  was  so  agreed  at 
last,  and  a  conference  between  Irish  members,  with  the 
Speaker  presiding,  was  set  up,  and  quickly  did  its  work. 
But  if  all  this  had  been  agreed  to  in  October  or  earlier, 
much  friction  would  have  been  saved  and  a  cause  of 
quarrel  with  the  Ulster  tliat  was  not  in  the  Convention 
might  have  been  avoided.  Still,  peace  was  achieved, 
and  the  proposal  to  cut  down  Irish  representation  was 
once  more  defeated. 

Grand  Committee  met  for  another  session,  but  was 
chiefly  concerned  with  getting  ready  for  the  reassembling 
of  Convention — fixed  for  Tuesday,  December  18th.  It 
was  decided  that  a  group  meeting  of  Nationalists  for 


312  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

informal  discussion  should  be  held  on  the  Monday  night 
— the  first  occasion  on  which  this  had  been  done. 

Ill-luck,  however,  seemed  to  dog  us.  Dr.  Kelly,  the 
Bishop  of  Ross,  who  was  much  closer  in  his  point  of  view 
to  Redmond  than  any  of  the  other  Bishops,  was  gravely 
ill.  This  was  foreseen.  But  on  the  Monday  a  heavy 
snowstorm  fell  ;  Redmond,  shut  up  in  his  hills  at  Augha- 
vanagh,  could  not  reach  Dublin.  The  roads  were  not  open 
till  the  Thursday,  and  then  he  thought  it  too  late  to  come. 
He  was  in  truth  already  too  ill  to  face  any  unusual  exertion. 

The  Convention  had  been  summoned,  not  to  receive 
a  final  report  from  the  Grand  Committee,  but  to  face 
a  new  situation.  An  offer  had  been  put  forward  by 
one  group  which  altered  the  whole  complexion  of  the 
controversy.  Grand  Committee  had  abstained  from 
deciding  whether  to  counsel  acceptance  or  rejection. 
But  for  the  first  time  an  influential  body  of  Irish  Unionists 
had  agreed,  not  as  individuals  but  as  representatives, 
to  accept  Home  Rule,  in  a  wider  measure  than  had  been 
proffered  by  the  Bills  of  1886  and  1893  or  by  the  Act 
of  1914.  Limitations  which  were  imposed  in  all  these 
had  been  struck  out  by  Lord  Midleton's  proposals. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  was  certain  that  the  Ulster  group 
would  reject  the  scheme.  Conversation  among  National- 
ists made  it  plain  that  if  Ulster  would  agree  with  Lord 
Midleton  we  should  all  join  them.  For  the  sake  of  an 
agreement  reached  between  all  sections  of  Irishmen,  but 
for  nothing  less  conclusive.  Dr.  O'Donnell  and  Mr.  Russell 
were  content  to  waive  the  claim  to  full  fiscal  independence. 
Such  an  agreement,  they  held,  would  be  accepted  by 
Parliament  in  its  integrity.  But  if  Ulster  stood  out, 
there  would  be  no  *'  substantial  agreement,"  and  the 
terms  which  Nationalists  and  Southern  Unionists  might 
combine  to  propose  would  be  treated  as  a  bargaining  offer, 
certain  to  be  chipped  down  by  Government  towards 
conformity  with  the  Ulster  demand.  In  the  result  there 
would  be  an  uprising  of  opinion  in  Ireland  against  a 


THE  CONVENTION  AND  THE  END        313 

measure  so  framed  ;  the  fiasco  of  July,  1916,  would  repeat 
itself. 

Against  this,  and  prompting  us  to  acceptance,  was 
the  view  very  strongly  held  by  Redmond,  that  Govern- 
ment iirgentlj'  needed  a  settlement  for  the  sake  of  the 
war,  and  would  use  to  the  utmost  any  leverage  which 
helped  them  to  this  end.  An  agreement  with  Lord 
Midleton  would  mean  a  Home  Rule  proposal  proceeding 
from  a  leading  Unionist  statesman  who  spoke  for  the 
interest  in  Ireland,  which,  if  any,  had  reason  to  fear 
Nationalist  government.  This  would  mean  necessarily 
a  profound  change  in  the  attitude  of  the  House  of  Lords 
and  of  all  those  social  influences  whose  power  we  had 
felt  so  painfully.  Government  could  undoubtedly,  if  it 
chose,  carry  a  measure  giving  effect  to  this  compact. 

Further,  weighing  greatly  with  the  instincts  of  the 
rank  and  file  was  the  motive  which  prompted  Irish 
Nationalists  to  welcome  the  advance  made  by  those 
whom  Lord  Midleton  represented.  The  Southern  Unionists 
were  the  old  landowning  and  professional  class,  friendly 
in  all  ways  of  intercourse,  but  politically  severed  and 
sundered  from  the  mass  of  the  population.  Now,  they 
came  forward  with  an  offer  to  help  in  attaining  our  desire 
— quite  frankly,  against  their  own  declared  conviction 
that  the  Union  was  the  best  plan,  but  with  an  equally 
frank  recognition  that  the  majority  was  the  majority 
and  was  honest  in  its  intent.  The  personality  of  the 
men  reinforced  the  effect  of  this  :  Lord  Oranmore,  for 
instance,  whom  most  of  them  had  only  known  by  anti- 
Home  Rule  speeches  in  the  House  of  Lords,  revealed 
himself  as  the  friendliest  of  Irishmen,  with  the  Irish  love 
for  a  witty  phrase. 

This  temperamental  attitude  was  of  help  to  Lord 
Midleton  when  on  December  18th  he  expounded  the 
position  of  himself  and  his  friends  in  a  very  powerful 
argument,  the  more  persuasive  because  the  good  will 
in  his  audience  softened  his  habitual  touch  of  conten- 


314  JOHN  REDMONDS  LAST  YEARS 

tiousness.  It  had  seemed  to  them,  he  said,  that  both 
in  the  Nationalist  and  Northern  Unionist  camp  there 
was  a  tendency  to  consider  dispositions  out  of  doors 
and  to  conciliate  certain  antagonisms  without  consider- 
ing whether  tho}'^  excited  others.  He  and  his  friends 
had  determined  to  fix  their  minds  solely  on  the  Conven- 
tion itself,  and  to  pursue  the  purpose  for  which  they  were 
summoned  of  endeavouring  after  agreement  within  that 
body.  They  were  Unionists  ;  but  they  had  asked  them- 
selves what  could  be  removed  from  the  present  system 
without  disturbing  the  essence  of  Union  ;  and  in  that 
effort  thej^  would  go  to  the  extremest  limit  in  their  power, 
without  thought  of  conciliating  opinions  outside,  and 
without  any  attempt  to  bargain. 

On  one  point  only  he  indicated  that  their  scheme  was 
tentative.  Defence  was  by  consent  of  all  left  to  the 
Imperial  Parliament.  This  implied,  he  held,  an  adequate 
contribution,  and  the  yield  of  customs  to  be  collected 
by  the  Imperial  Parliament  seemed  roughly  to  meet 
the  case,  for  the  period  of  the  war.  But  this  was  not 
absolutely  a  hard-and-fast  proposal.  In  any  case,  after 
the  war,  the  amount  should  be  the  subject  of  inquiry 
by  a  joint  commission. 

Apart  from  this,  the  offer  was  their  last  word.  It 
conceded  to  Ireland  the  control  of  all  purely  Irish  services. 
This  included  the  fixation  of  excise,  because  excise  on 
commodities  produced  in  Ireland  did  not  touch  the  treaty- 
making  power.  Customs  touched  that  power,  and  there- 
fore customs,  like  defence,  must  be  left  to  the  Imperial 
Parliament.  But,  he  argued,  Irish  Nationalists  were 
not  asked  to  give  up  anything  which  had  been  conceded 
to  them  by  any  previous  Home  Rule  proposal. 

To  all  Unionists  he  said :  These  proposals  keep  the  power 
of  the  Crown  over  all  Imperial  services  undiminished  ; 
they  keep  representation  at  Westminster — a  corollary 
from  leaving  the  Imperial  Parliament  powers  over  Irish 
taxation ;    and   bj^   accepting   the   suggestions   already 


THE  CONVENTION  AND  THE  END        315 

agreed  to,  they  give  a  generous  representation  to  Unionists 
in  an  Irish  Parliament.  This  special  representation  of 
minorities  was,  he  thought,  sufficient  to  give  a  guarantee 
of  "  sane  legislation  "  while  it  lasted  ;  and  he  suggested 
that  the  period  should  be  fifteen  years.  These  concessions, 
in  his  opinion,  sufficiently  protected  Southern  Unionists. 
To  Ulster  he  said,  "  We  share  every  danger  threatening 
you — we  have  many  dangers  you  need  not  fear.  Yet, 
we  have  no  sinister  anticipations.  Are  you  still  deter- 
mined to  stand  out  ?  " 

On  the  other  hand,  when  so  much  of  the  full  demand 
was  conceded,  were  Nationalists  insistent,  he  asked,  on 
demanding  what  they  had  never  asked  in  the  discussions 
upon  any  Home  Rule  Bill  ?  Nationalist  leaders  had 
now  the  chance  of  leading  a  combination  of  all  sane 
elements  in  the  landowning  and  land-cultivating  classes. 
No  Irish  leader  had  ever  before  been  able  to  present  such 
an  appeal  to  Unionist  opinion  as  would  come  from  the 
man  who  represented  a  Convention  Party. 

It  was  a  sf)eech  which  Redmond,  if  present,  must  have 
replied  to,  and  could  not  have  replied  to  without  indi- 
cating profound  sympathy — for  he  was  in  agreement 
with  its  main  lines  ;  and  his  expression  of  opinion  upon 
it  must  have  influenced  strongly  the  views  of  the  rank 
and  file  at  the  moment  when  they  were  most  open  to 
suggestion. 

In  his  absence,  men's  minds  wore  greatly  affected  by 
the  fear  that  if  we  adopted  these  proposals,  our  decision 
would  be  exposed  to  attack  from  a  combination  of  three 
forces — Sinn  F6in,  which  would  at  least  officially  con- 
demn anything  less  than  complete  separation,  and  would 
furiously  assail  a  proposal  that  denied  full  taxing  powers  ; 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  which  would  take  its  lead 
from  Bishop  O'Donnell,  who  set  out  in  an  able  memor- 
andum the  reasons  why  Ireland  must  have  full  control 
of  taxation  ;  and  finally,  the  powerful  newspaper  whose 
proprietor,  Mr.  Murphj^  at  once  gave  signs  of  his  hostility 


316  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEAR>S 

by  putting  on  the  paper  an  amendment  to  Lord  Midleton'a 
resolution  which  amounted  to  a  direct  negative. 

The  reassembly  of  the  Convention  was  fixed  for 
Wednesday,  January  2nd.  Redmond  came  to  Dublin 
on  the  Monday.  He  told  me  that  he  was  inclined  to 
move  that  while  we  thanked  Lord  Midleton  for  his  sub- 
stantial contribution  towards  our  purpose,  we  could  not 
accept  his  proposal,  unless  it  opened  the  way  to  a  settle- 
ment. What  he  meant  by  this  was  not  merely  that  if 
Ulster  agreed,  we  should  accept ;  for  that  would  certainly 
open  the  way.  But  he  had  also  in  his  mind  the  possi- 
bility of  a  guarantee  from  Government  that  an  arrange- 
ment come  to,  as  this  might  be,  by  four-fifths  of  the 
Convention,  and  repudiated  only  by  the  pledge-bound 
Ulster  block,  would  be  regarded  as  substantial  agree- 
ment, and  taken  as  a  basis  for  legislation.  In  that  case, 
also,  the  Avay  would  be  open  ;  but  he  had  no  written 
assurance  of  such  an  understanding,  though  I  gathered 
that  he  was  urging  the  Government  to  give  it.  We  were, 
however,  told  on  good  authority  in  these  days  that 
if  the  Southern  Unionists'  proposal  was  accepted  by 
the  Nationalists  and  other  elements  outside  of  Ulster, 
the  Prime  Minister  would  use  his  whole  influence  with 
his  colleagues  to  secure  acceptance  of  the  compact  and 
immediate  legislation  uj^on  it.  This  would  mean,  we  were 
also  assured,  that  the  whole  thing  would  be  done  before 
Easter. 

On  January  2nd  the  resumed  debate  for  the  first  time 
brought  the  Convention  face  to  face  with  concrete  pro- 
posals for  a  settlement.  In  tone  and  in  substance  it 
would  have  done  credit  to  any  Parliament  that  ever 
sat.  I  shall  not  try  to  summarize  the  arguments,  but 
simply  to  note  certain  outstanding  facts. 
II  Lord  Midleton  modified  his  original  proposal  that 
collection  of  customs  should  be  an  Imperial  service  through- 
out. He  agreed  that  collection  might  be  done  by  the 
Irish  Civil  Service.    Moreover,  he  admitted  that  Ireland 


THE  CONVENTION  AND  THE  END        317 

must  have  full  means  of  checking  the  account  for  these 
taxes,  great  part  of  which  must  necessarily  be  collected 
at  English  ports,  since  tea,  tobacco  and  the  other  dutiable 
articles  were  seldom  shipped  direct  to  Ireland. 

But  he  made  it  plain  that  the  essential  of  his  proposal 
was  the  maintenance  of  a  common  customs  system, 
leaving  the  fixation  of  customs  to  the  Imperial  Parlia- 
ment for  Great  Britain  and  Ireland.  If  this  was  denied, 
as  it  would  be  by  the  acceptance  of  Mr.  Murphy's  amend- 
ment, all  Unionists  would  be  driven  once  more  into  the 
same  lobby  ;  all  chance  of  uniting  elements  heretofore 
divided  would  disappear. 

This  was  the  fact  against  which  we  were  brought  up. 
Insistence  on  the  full  Nationalist  demand  as  it  had  been 
outlined  in  the  Convention  meant  the  refusal  of  a  new 
and  powerful  alliance  which  now  offered  itself,  and  the 
destruction  of  anything  which  could  be  called  an  agree- 
ment. 

In  the  close.  Lord  Midleton  reinforced  his  appeal  bj'^ 
a  solid  material  argument.  The  sub-committee  presided 
over  by  Lord  MacDonnell  had  reached  unanimous  con- 
clusions embodying  proposals  for  the  completion  of  land 
purchase  within  a  ver}-  brief  period.  Landlords,  agents, 
tenants,  representatives  for  Ulster  as  well  as  from  the 
South  and  West,  were  parties  to  this  plan.  Lord  Midleton 
now  looked  back  on  the  past  as  one  who  had  been  in 
the  fight  since  Mr.  Gladstone's  first  Home  Rule  Bill. 
Every  fresh  settlement  had  been  wrecked,  he  said,  by 
standing  for  the  last  shred  of  the  demand.  In  1885,  if 
Gladstone  had  abandoned  the  identity  of  democratic 
franchise  for  both  countries  and  had  made  to  the  Irish 
minority  such  concessions  as  this  Convention  was  willing 
to  make,  he  would  have  carried  the  Liberal  Unionist 
element  with  him.  Then,  as  now,  a  great  land  purchase 
scheme  depended  on  the  solution  of  the  main  problem. 
To-day  land  purchase  stood  or  fell  with  the  Convention. 

He  was  backed  by  Lord  Dunraven — who  waived  his 


318  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

preference  for  his  own  original  proposal — and  by  Lord 
Desart,  in  moet  able  argument :  the  latter  declaring  that 
the  proposal  to  give  Ireland  a  separate  customs  system 
could  never  be  carried  in  England.     But  the  speech  of 
the  day  came  from  Mr.  Kavanagh,  who,  speaking  as  a 
Nationalist  who  had  been  a  Unionist,  ended  a  most  moving 
appeal  for  agreement  with  a  declaration  that  he  at  all 
events  would  vote  for  the  compromise.     There  M'as  no 
mistaking  the  effect  produced  by  the  earnestness  of  this 
speaker,  who  knew  as  much  of  Ireland  and  was  as  well 
fitted  to  judge  of  its  true  interests  as  any  man  in  the 
room.    That  effect  was  felt,  I  think,  in  the  tone  of  a 
private   meeting   of   Nationalists   held   the   same   night. 
Redmond,  with  the  art  of  which  he  was  a  master,  indi- 
cated support  for  the  proposal  without  forcing  a  con- 
clusion.    He  dwelt  on  the  fact  that  if  we  did  not  agree 
we  not  only  lost  our  chance  of  immediate  and  complete 
land  purchase  but  left  ourselves  subjected  to  the  entire 
burden   of   war   taxation.     Other   sjDcakers   pointed   out 
that  wo  ought  not  to  let  ourselves  be  lured  into  driving 
the    Southern    Unionists    and    the    Ulstermen    together 
against  us.    Mr.  Clancy  said  in  his  downright  manner 
that  he  would  not  as  yet  express  his  view  publicly  :    but 
that  he  was  not  going  to  reject  this  offer  for  the  sake 
of  fixing  taxes  on  tea  and  tobacco,  and  that  when  the 
right  time  came,  he  would  say  so.     The  strongest  argu- 
ments used  against  this  view  were  that  in  surrendering 
control  of  customs  we  lost  our  management  of  the  taxes 
which  pressed  upon  the  poor  ;    and  further,  that  even 
if  we  agreed,  no  one  knew  what  would  result.     We  had 
no  guarantee  that  the  compact  would  be  expressed  in 
legislation.     But  on  the  whole  the  tone  showed  a  dis- 
position to  accept,  and  especially  to  support  Redmond 
— who  had  spoken  of  his  political  career  as  a  thing  ended. 
Next  day  the  debate  in  Convention  continued.     Arch- 
bishop Bernard,  speaking  as  a  Unionist,  said  that  the 
proposal  was  a  venture  beset  with  risks,  but  the  greatest 


THE  CONVENTION  AND  THE  END        319 

danger  of  all  wa«  to  do  nothing.  It  would  be  a  grave 
responsibility  for  Ulster  to  wreck  the  chance  of  a  settle- 
ment. Lord  Oranmore  dwelt  on  the  composition  of 
the  proposed  Legislature  Power  was  to  be  entrusted 
to  a  very  different  Parliament  from  that  which  they  had 
feared.  He  and  his  like  were  to  get  what  they  desired 
— an  opportunity  of  taking  part  in  the  government  of 
the  country.  It  looked  to  him  as  if  the  only  possible 
Irish  Government  under  this  scheme  must  be  Unionist 
in  its  complexion. 

Perhaps  there  was  an  echo  of  this  in  Redmond's  speech, 
by  far  the  greatest  he  made  in  the  Convention,  when  at 
last  ho  intervened  on  January  4th — the  Friday  which 
ended  that  session. 

He  dealt  at  once  with  Mr.  Barrie's  often  repeated 
view  that  the  proper  object  of  our  endeavours  was  to 
find  a  compromise  between  the  Act  of  1914  and  the  pro- 
posal for  partition  put  forward  by  Ulster.  On  that 
basis  the  Convention  could  never  have  been  brought 
together.  The  Prime  Minister's  letter  of  May  16th  which 
proposed  the  Convention  suggestesd  that  Irishmen  should 
meet  "  for  the  purpose  of  drafting  a  Constitution  for 
their  own  country."  On  May  22nd  Mr.  Lloyd  George 
had  said,  "  We  propose  that  Ireland  should  try  her  own 
hand  at  hammering  out  an  instrument  of  government 
for  her  people."  The  only  limitation  was  that  it  should 
be  a  Constitution  **  for  the  future  government  of  Ireland 
within  the  Empire." 

Then  he  turned  to  the  argument  that  all  the  sacrifices 
were  asked  from  Unionists.  Let  us  weigh  them,  he  said. 
What  sacrifices  had  been  made  by  the  Irish  Nationalists, 
since  this  chain  of  events  began  ? — Then  followed  a 
passage  which  I  recapitulate,  not  necessarily  in  full,  but 
in  phrases  which  he  actually  used,  and  I  noted  down : 

**  Personal  loss  I  set  aside.  My  position — our  position 
— before  the  war  was  that  we  possessed  the  confidence 
of  nearly  the  entire  country.    I  took  a  risk — we  took 


320  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

it — with  eyes  open.  I  have — we  have — not  merely  taken 
the  risk  but  made  the  sacrifice.  If  the  choice  were  to 
be  made  to-morrow,  I  would  do  it  all  over  again. 

"  I  have  had  my  surfeit  of  public  life.  My  modest 
ambition  would  be  to  serve  in  some  quite  humble  capacity 
under  the  first  Unionist  Prime  Minister  of  Ireland." 

As  to  other  sacrifices,  in  the  way  of  concessions,  he 
recited  the  list  of  what  had  been  agreed  to — proposals 
80  strangely  undemocratic — the  nomination  of  members 
of  Parliament,  the  disproportionate  powers  given  to  a 
minority.  "  Shall  we  not  be  denounced  for  making 
them  ?  "  he  asked. 

On  the  other  hand,  what  sacrifices  had  been  made  by 
the  Southern  Unionists  ?  These  were  the  men  who  had 
had  the  hardest  battle  to  fight  in  the  struggle  over  Home 
Rule.  They  were  not,  like  Ulster  Unionists,  "  entrenched 
in  a  ring-fence,"  but  the  scattered  few,  who  had  suffered 
most  and  who  might  naturally  have  entertained  most 
bitterness.  Yet  Lord  Midleton's  speech  had  been  instinct 
with  an  admirable  spirit.  The  speech  of  the  Archbishop 
of  Dublin  had  touched  him  deeply. 

"  Between  these  men  and  us  there  never  again  can 
be  the  differences  of  the  past.  They  have  put  behind 
them  all  bitter  memories.  They  have  agreed  to  the 
framework  of  a  Bill  better  than  any  offered  to  us  in  1886, 
1893  or  1914." 

As  for  us  Nationalists — he  emphasized  that  each  man 
came  here  free,  untrammelled. 

**  I  speak  only  for  myself.  But  even  if  I  stand  alone, 
I  will  not  allow  myself,  because  I  cannot  get  the  full 
measure  of  my  demand,  to  be  drawn  to  reject  the  proffered 
hand  of  friendship  held  out  to  us.  In  my  opinion  we 
should  be  political  fools  if  we  did  not  endeavour  to  cement 
an  alliance  with  these  men." 

As  concerned  the  Labour  men,  Mr.  Whitley,  who  had 
alwaj'^s  been  a  Unionist,  had  declared  willingness  to  agree. 
But  the  Ulster  Unionists — what  sacrifice  had  thev  made  ? 


THE   CONVENTION   AND  THE   END         321 

•*  The  last  thing  I  desire  is  to  attack  Mr.  Barrie  and 
his  friends.  But  they  are  not  fre'.  agents.  I  was  shocked 
when  I  heard  that  a  section  here  openly  avowed  the 
need  to  refer  back  to  some  outside  body.  If  we  had  been 
told  we  were  going  into  a  body  which  would  consist  of 
two  orders  of  members,  it  would  have  been  difficult  to 
get  us  here." 

On  the  essential  point  Ulster  had  made  no  concession. 
What  did  Mr,  Barrie  say  in  his  formal  document  ?  '  We 
are  satisfied  that  for  Ireland  and  for  Great  Britain  a 
common  system  of  finances  with  one  Exchequer  is  a 
fundamental  necessity.'  If  they  denied  the  taxing  power 
to  Ireland,  any  proposal  on  these  lines  must  give  Ireland 
less  than  any  proposal  for  Home  Rule  ever  put  forward. 
This  was  Ulster's  original  position  and  they  had  not 
budged  an  inch. 

"  This  is  their  response  to  the  Empire's  S.O.S.  Is  it 
worthy  of  Ulster's  Imperial  loyalty  ?  I  don't  believe  it 
is  their  last  word." 

Lord  Londonderry,  however,  in  replying,  did  not  add 
any  ground  of  hope.  The  last  speech  of  the  day 
announced  that  of  six  trade  unionists  five  would  support 
the  compromise. 

Redmond  that  evening  put  on  the  notice  paper  a 
motion  adopting  Lord  Midleton's  proposals  provided 
that  they  "  be  adopted  by  His  Majesty's  Government 
as  a  settlement  of  the  Irish  question  and  legislative  effect 
be  given  to  them  forthwith." 

On  the  day  before  this  motion  was  tabled,  a  party 
was  given  at  Lord  Granard's  house  which  everybody 
attended,  and  which  marked  the  most  festive  moment 
of  our  comradeship.  When  we  separated  on  the  Friday 
most  men  were  absolutely  confident  of  an  agreement 
covering  four-fifths  of  the  Convention. 

Unhappily,  the  motion  could  not  come  under  con- 
sideration for  a  period  of  ten  days.  In  the  following 
week  Lord  Midleton  thought  it  necessary  to  attend  the 

22 


322  JOHN   REDMOND'S   LAST   YEARS 

House  of  Lords.  It  was  settled  that  we  should  spend 
the  interval  discussing  the  land  purchase  report,  for 
which  his  presence  was  not  essential.  Redmond,  whose 
health  was  still  bad,  did  not  come  up  to  Dublin.  All 
this  gave  time  for  agitation,  and  agitation  was  at  work. 

Still,  during  that  week  there  was  no  sign  of  any  change 
in  tone.  Members  of  the  local  bodies  who  had  gone  to 
their  homes  at  the  week's  end  came  back  just  as  much 
inclined  to  settle  as  before. 

I  met  Redmond  on  the  night  of  Monday,  January 
14th.  He  had  seen  no  one  in  these  ten  days.  He  told 
me  that  he  was  still  uncertain  what  would  happen,  but 
asked  me  to  get  one  of  the  leading  County  Councillors 
to  second  his  motion.  Next  morning  I  came  in  half 
an  hour  before  the  meeting  to  find  the  man  I  wanted. 
When  I  met  him  he  was  full  of  excitement,  and  said, 
"  Something  has  gone  wrong  ;  the  men  are  all  saying 
they  must  vote  against  Redmond."  Then  it  was  evident 
that  propaganda  had  been  busy  to  some  purpose. 

When  Redmond  came  in  to  his  place,  I  said,  "  It's  all 
right.  Martin  McDonogh  will  second  your  motion." 
He  answered  with  a  characteristic  brusqueness,  *'  He 
needn't  trouble.  I'm  not  going  to  move  it  ;  Devlin 
and  the  Bishops  are  voting  against  me." 

He  rose  immediately  the  Chairman  was  in  his  j)lace. 

"  The  amendment  which  I  have  on  the  paper,"  he 
said,  "  embodies  the  deliberate  advice  I  give  to  the 
Convention. 

"  I  consulted  no  one — and  could  not  do  so,  being  ill. 
It  stands  on  record  on  my  sole  responsibility. 

*'  Since  entering  the  building  I  have  heard  that  some 
very  important  Nationalist  representatives  are  against 
this  course — the  Catholic  bishops,  Mr.  Devlin — and  others. 
I  must  face  the  situation — at  which  I  am  surprised ;  and 
I  regret  it. 

*'  If  I  proceeded  I  should  probably  carry  my  point 
on   a  division,  but  the  Nationalists   would  be  divided. 


THE   CONVENTION   AND  THE   END         323 

Such  a  division  could  not  carry  out  the  objects  I  have 
in  view. 

"  Therefore,  I  must  avoid  pressing  my  motion.  But 
I  leave  it  standing  on  the  paper.  The  others  will  give 
their  advice.  I  feel  that  I  can  be  of  no  further  service 
to  the  Convention  and  will  therefore  not  move."  ^ 

There  was  a  pause  of  consternation.  The  Chairman 
intervened  and  the  debate  proceeded,  and  was  carried 
on  through  the  week.  During  its  course  a  letter  to  the 
Chairman  from  the  Bishop  of  Ross  was  circulated  to 
us,  most  dexterous  in  exposition,  most  affecting  in  the 
tone  of  its  conclusion.  It  can  be  read  in  the  Report 
of  the  Convention  and  it  cannot  with  justice  be  quoted 
except  at  full  length — so  admirable  is  the  linking  of 
argument.  It  need  only  be  said  here  that  it  was  an 
appeal  "  to  my  fellow-Nationalists  who  have  already 
made  great  concessions  "  to  yield,  for  the  sake  of  a  settle- 
ment, this  further  point,  and  that  the  appeal  was  signed 
"  from  my  sick-bed,  not  far  removed  from  my  death- 
bed." That  eloquent  voice  and  subtle  brain  could  ill 
be  spared  from  our  assembly  :  but  the  letter  came  too  late. 
It  is  plain  that  the  writer  had  no  inkling  of  what  would 
happen  till  it  was  actually  taking  place. 

No  one  can  overstate  the  effect  of  this  episode. 
Redmond's  personal  ascendancy  in  the  Convention  had 
become  very  great.  I  am  certain  there  was  not  a  man 
there  but  would  have  said,  *'  If  there  is  to  be  an  Irish 
Parliament,  Redmond  must  be  Prime  Minister,  and  his 
personality  will  give  that  Parliament  its  best  possible 
chance."  The  Ulstermen  had  more  than  once  expressed 
their  view  that  if  Home  Rule  were  sure  to  mean  Redmond's 
rule,  their  objections  to  it  would  be  materially  lessened. 
Now,  they  saw  Redmond  thrown  over,  and  by  a  com- 
bination in  which  the  clerical  influence,  so  much  distrusted 
by  them,  was  paramount. 

I  These  are  my  notes,  jotted  as  he  spoke. — S.  G. 


324  JOHN   REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 


IV 

A  new   stage   in   the   history   of   the   Convention  now 

opens.     In  the  interval  between  the  meeting  which  began 

by   Redmond's  withdrawal  of  his  amendment  and  that 

of   the    following    week,    Sir    Horace    Plunkett    went    to 

London  and  laid  the  situation  before  the  Prime  Minister. 

Redmond  had  also  written  to  Mr.  Lloyd  George  stating 

that    no    progress    could    be    made    unless    Government 

would    declare    its    intentions    as    to    legislation.      The 

Chairman   came   back   with   the   following   letter  in   his 

pocket : 

10  Downing  Street, 

Whitehall,  S.W.  1, 

January  21,   1918. 

Dear  Sir  Horace  Plunkett, 

In  our  conversation  on  Saturday  you  told  me 
that  the  situation  in  the  Convention  has  now  reached  a 
very  critical  stage.  The  issues  are  so  grave  that  I  feel 
the  Convention  should  not  come  to  a  definite  break  with- 
out the  Government  having  an  opportunity  of  full  con- 
sultation with  the  leaders  of  the  different  sections.  If, 
and  when,  therefore,  a  point  is  reached  at  which  the 
Convention  finds  that  it  can  make  no  further  progress 
towards  an  agreed  settlement,  I  would  ask  that  repre- 
sentatives should  be  sent  to  confer  with  the  Cabinet. 
The  Government  are  agreed  and  determined  that  a  solution 
must  be  found.  But  they  are  firmly  convinced  that  the 
best  hope  of  a  settlement  lies  within  the  Convention, 
and  they  are  prepared  to  do  anything  in  their  power 
to  assist  the  Convention  finally  to  reach  a  basis  of  agree- 
ment which  would  enable  a  new  Irish  Constitution  to 
come  into  operation  with  the  consent  of  all  parties. 

Yours  sincerely, 

D.  Lloyd  George. 

Before  acting  on  this,  Sir  Horace  Plunkett  allowed 
the  debate  to  continue  during  two  days.  Since  no  move- 
ment towards  agreement  manifested  itself,  but  only 
evidence  of  widespread  and  various  divergence,  he  laid 


THE   CONVENTION   AND  THE   END        325 

the  Prime  Minister's  invitation  before  the  Convention. 
There  was  considerable  difference  of  opinion  before  a 
decision  was  reached  for  acceptance.  Groups  separated 
to  select  their  representatives  on  the  delegation. 

It  was  agreed  in  private  conference  that  only  one  view 
should  be  presented  from  the  Nationalist  side,  and  that 
the  view  of  what  was  at  this  point  clearly  the  majority. 
Redmond,  in  agreeing  to  act  as  a  delegate,  agreed  to  set 
aside  his  own  judgment  and  to  press  the  claim  for  full 
fiscal  responsibility — which,  like  other  Nationalists,  he 
regarded  as  in  the  abstract  Ireland's  right.  But  illness 
prevented  him  from  attending  when  at  last  the  delegates 
were  received  by  the  Prime  Minister  on  February  13th. 

On  the  5th  he  had  asked  a  question  in  Parliament — 
the  last  he  was  to  ask  there.  It  concerned  the  starting 
of  a  factory  for  the  manufacture  of  aircraft  in  Dublin 
— one  of  the  things  for  which  he  was  pressing  in  his  cease- 
less effort  to  bring  Ireland  some  industrial  advantage 
from  the  war.  I  saw  him  towards  the  end  of  that  month 
in  his  room  at  the  House,  and  he  commented  bitterly 
upon  a  raid  carried  out  by  Sinn  Feiners,  in  which  some 
newly  erected  buildings  were  destroyed  at  one  of  the 
aerodromes  near  Dublin  which  he  had  helj^ed  to  estab- 
lish. But  the  main  thing  he  had  to  say  concerned  the 
course  of  the  Convention.  Everything,  in  his  judgment, 
was  wrecked  ;  he  saw  nothing  ahead  for  his  country  but 
ruin  and  chaos. 

He  spoke  of  his  health.  A  bout  of  sickness  which 
had  prostrated  him  at  Christmas  in  Dublin  had  left  him 
uneasy.  He  was  at  the  time,  I  thought,  unduly  alarmed 
about  himself,  and  I  believed  that  the  continuance  of 
this  frame  of  mind  was  simply  characteristic  of  a  man 
who  had  very  little  experience  of  ill-health.  I  left  him 
with  profound  compassion  for  his  trouble  of  spirit,  but 
without  any  serious  apprehension  for  his  state  of  body. 

The  Convention  reassembled  on  February  26th  to 
consider  the  result  of  the  delegation,  which  was  summed 


326  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

up  in  a  letter  from  Mr.  Lloyd  George.  This  well-known 
document  begins  with  a  definite  pledge  of  action.  On 
receiving  the  report  of  the  Convention  the  Government 
would  give  it  immediate  attention  and  would  "  proceed 
with  the  least  possible  delay  to  submit  legislative  pro- 
posals to  Parliament." — The  date  of  this  pledge  was 
February  25,  1918. — Mr.  Lloyd  George  pressed,  however, 
for  a  settlement  "  in  and  through  the  Convention "  ; 
and  he  declared  his  conviction  that  "  In  view  of  previous 
attempts  at  settlement  and  of  the  deliberations  of  the 
Convention  itself,  the  only  hope  of  agreement  lies  in  a 
solution  which  on  the  one  side  provides  for  the  unity 
of  Ireland  by  a  single  Legislature,  with  adequate  safe- 
guards for  the  interests  of  Ulster  and  of  the  Southern 
Unionists,  and,  on  the  other,  secures  tlie  well-being 
of  the  Empire  and  the  fundamental  unity  of  the  United 
Kingdom." 

Ireland's  strong  claim  to  some  control  of  indirect 
taxation  was  admitted  ;  but  it  was  laid  down  that  till 
two  years  after  the  war  the  jBxation  and  collection  of 
customs  and  excise  should  be  left  to  the  Imperial 
Parliament  :  and  that  at  the  end  of  the  war  a  Royal 
Commission  should  report  on  Ireland's  contribution  to 
Imperial  expenditure  and  should  submit  proposals  as  to 
the  fiscal  relations  of  the  two  countries. 

For  the  war  period,  Ireland  was  to  contribute  "  an 
agreed  proportion  of  the  Imperial  expenditure,"  but 
was  to  receive  the  full  proceeds  of  Irish  revenue  from 
customs  and  excise,  less  the  agreed  contribution.  The 
police  and  postal  services  were  to  be  reserved  also  as 
war  services. 

These  provisions  were  laid  down  as  essentials.  A 
suggestion  was  made  of  an  Ulster  Committee  within  the 
Irish  Parliament,  having  power  to  modify  or  veto 
measures,  whether  of  legislation  or  administration,  in 
their  application  to  Ulster. 

Lastly,  Government  expressed  their  willingness  to  accept 


THE   CONVENTION   AND   THE   END         327 

and  finance  the  Convention's  scheme  for  land  purchase 
and  to  give  a  large  grant  for  urban  housing. 

The  question  now  before  the  Convention  was  whether 
it  should  or  should  not  accept  this  offer,  which  differed 
from  the  Midleton  proposals  in  that  it  withheld  the 
control  of  excise  as  well  as  of  customs,  and  that  it 
retained  control  of  police  and  Post  Office  for  the  war 
period.  It  also  adumbrated  an  Ulster  Committee,  which 
had  been  an  unpopular  suggestion  when  put  forward 
in  the  presentation  stages.  On  the  other  hand,  it  offered 
great  material  inducements  in  the  proposed  expenditure 
for  land  purchase  and  for  housing.  Some  of  the  County 
Councillors  who  had  been  most  vehement  in  their  opposi- 
tion to  the  Midleton  compromise  were  now  disposed  to 
think  this  too  good  an  offer  to  let  go,  but  believed  it 
could  be  obtained  without  their  taking  the  responsi- 
bility of  voting  for  it.  It  was  necessary  to  point  out 
that  the  Irish  party  could  not  lower  a  standard  of  national 
demand  set  up  b}^  the  Nationalists  in  the  Convention, 
and  that  if  they  did  so  they  would  be  hooted  out  of 
existence. 

The  main  argument  of  those  who  advised  against 
acceptance  was  that  Ministers  had  pledged  themselves 
to  act  in  any  case.  Let  them.  We  could  best  help  by 
enunciating  our  own  programme.  Then  they  would 
know  the  real  facts  of  the  Irish  situation.  If  a  majority 
of  the  Convention  accepted  the  proposals  of  the  Prime 
Minister's  letter,  there  was  no  pledge  that  the  Bill  would 
be  on  those  lines.  We  needed  to  keep  a  bargaining 
margin  in  what  we  put  forward.  It  was  even  suggested 
that  the  Government  proposals  would  be  more  likely 
to  attract  support  in  Ireland  if  put  forward  as  a  ger  erous 
offer  from  a  largely  Unionist  Government  than  if  pub- 
lished as  a  compromise  to  which  Nationalists  had 
condescended. 

Our  reply  was  that  the  essential  thing  was  to  make 
a  beginning  with  self-government,  and  that  by  refusing 


328  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEAHS 

to  accept  the  Government's  offer,  on  which  alone  we 
could  combine  with  an  influential  Unionist  section,  we 
gravely  increased  the  difficulties  in  the  way  of  carrying 
Home  Rule.  If,  as  we  held,  the  main  need  was  to  unite 
Ireland,  the  last  thing  on  which  we  should  insist  was 
the  concession  of  complete  financial  powers.  When  the 
lack  of  those  powers  began  to  prove  itself  injurious  to 
Ireland's  material  interests,  Ireland  would  certainly 
become  united  in  a  demand  for  the  concession  of  them  ; 
and  the  history  of  the  British  Empire  since  the  loss  of 
America  showed  that  every  such  demand  had  been 
granted  to  a  self-governing  State. 

At  this  moment  interest  centred  on  the  discussion  in 
private  councils  of  Nationalists.  The  debates  in  full 
Convention  Avere  animated,  but  somewhat  unreal  by 
comparison.  Lord  Midleton's  motion  had  been  dropped, 
by  consent,  for  a  series  of  resolutions  tabled  by  Lord 
MacDonnell  which  were  in  substance  an  acceptance  of 
Government's  proposal. 

But  neither  in  the  private  councils  nor  in  the  public 
debates  had  we  Redmond's  presence.  His  illness  had 
grown  serious  ;  an  operation  was  necessary  ;  it  passed 
over  hopefully,  and  on  Tuesday,  March  5th,  when  the 
debate  resumed,  Mr.  Clancy  had  a  telegram  saying  that 
he  was  practically  out  of  danger. 

It  was  plain  in  these  days  that  we  were  nearing  a  most 
critical  decision,  and  Nationalist  opinion  was  profoundly 
uneasy.  Many  men  were  drifting  back  to  Redmond's 
view,  and  recoiled  from  the  prospect  of  dividing  the 
Convention  once  more  into  its  original  component  parts 
— Nationalists  on  the  one  side,  Unionists  on  the  other. 
It  was  proposed  that  on  the  Wednesday  Nationalists 
should  meet  and,  if  possible,  concert  joint  action  ;  if 
not,  determine  definitely  each  to  go  our  own  ways  ;  for 
a  painful  part  of  the  situation  was  that  all  of  us  had 
been  used  to  act  together,  and  none  now  felt  himself 
free   of   some   obligation.     This   had   to   be   cleared   up 


THE  CONVENTION  AND  THE   END         329 

When  we  came  down  to  Trinity  College  that  morning, 
the  news  met  us  that  Redmond  was  dead. 

The  Convention  adjourned  its  work,  although  time 
pressed  most  seriously,  till  after  the  interment.  Ireland 
is  a  country  where  a  public  man  can  always  count  on  a 
good  funeral.  The  body  was  brought  to  Kingstown, 
and  thence  by  special  train  to  Wexford,  where  he  had 
expressed  the  wish  to  be  laid,  in  the  burying-place  of  his 
own  people  and  in  the  town  with  which  he  had  been 
most  closely  associated.  Hundreds  of  men  came  from 
distant  parts  to  mark  their  sorrow  and  respect  :  what 
remained  of  him  was  carried  in  long  and  imposing  pro- 
cession through  the  streets.  Over  the  grave  Mr.  Dillon, 
who  had  been  chosen  to  succeed  him  in  the  chair  of  the 
Irish  party,  spoke  eloquent  and  fitting  words.  Some 
day,  no  doubt,  a  monument  to  his  memory  will  be  set 
up  in  the  streets  of  W^exford,  where  his  great  uncle's 
statue  stands,  and  where  will  be  placed  the  memorial 
to  his  gallant  brother,  subscribed  for  from  all  parts  of 
the  kingdom  and  from  all  Irish  regiments  in  the  Army. 

But  I  say  without  hesitation  that  the  first  and  most 
strildng  endeavour  to  put  in  lasting  shape  a  tribute  to 
John  Redmond  was  made  in  the  Convention,  not  by 
great  men,  but  by  the  ordinary  rank  and  file  of  Irish 
Nationalists,  who  went  back  from  the  graveside  to  the 
work  which  his  death  had  interrupted. 

Those  who  had  been  inclined  before  to  accept  his 
advice — still  standing  on  our  minutes — were  now  more 
than  ever  determined  to  follow  it.  That  advice  was 
not  to  refuse  the  hand  of  friendship  which  offered  itself 
from  men  who  by  alliance  with  us  could  take  away  from 
the  Home  Rule  demand  all  sectarian  character  :  who 
could  bring  for  the  first  time  a  great  and  representative 
body  of  Irish  landlord  opinion  and  Irish  Protestant 
opinion  into  line  with  the  opinion  of  Irish  tenants  and 
Irish  Catholics.  In  order  to  act  upon  this  advice  men 
needed  to  face   a   powerful  combination   of  forces  and 


330  JOHN   REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

much  threatened  unpopularity  :  they  had  to  encounter 
the  hostility  of  an  able  and  vindictively  conducted  news- 
paper ;  they  had  to  separate  themselves  politically  from 
the  united  voice  of  their  own  hierarchy  ;  they  had  to 
break  away  from  the  politician  who  for  many  years  now 
had  equalled  Redmond  in  his  influence  in  Ireland  and 
surpassed  him  in  popularity.  All  of  them  were  repre- 
sentative of  constituents,  all  were  living  among  those 
whom  they  represented  ;  not  a  man  of  them  but  knew 
he  would  worsen  his  personal  and  political  position  by 
what  he  did.  Yet,  for  that  is  the  true  way  to  state  it, 
they  stood  to  their  dead  leader's  policy. 

It  needs  not  to  follow  out  in  any  detail  the  steps  by 
which  we  reached  the  end  of  our  labours.  In  the  upshot, 
the  Ulster  group  of  nineteen  dissented  from  every- 
thing and  joined  in  a  report  which  renewed  the  demand 
for  partition.  The  Primate  and  the  Provost  signed  a 
separate  note  declaring  that  a  Federal  Scheme  based 
on  the  Swiss  or  Canadian  system  offered  the  only  solu- 
tion which  could  avoid  the  alternative  choice  between 
the  coercion  of  Ulster  and  the  partition  of  Ireland.  The 
remaining  members,  sixty-six  in  all,  accepted  one  common 
scheme. I  Their  number  included  ten  Southern  Unionists, 
five  Labour  representatives  (three  of  whom  were  Protestant 
artisans  from  Belfast),  with  Lords  Granard,  MacDonnell 
and  Dunraven,  Sir  Bertram  Windle  and  the  representa- 
tives of  the  Dublin  and  Cork  Chambers  of  Commerce. 

The  scheme  on  which  we  concurred  recommended  the 
immediate  establishment  of  self-government  by  an  Irish 
Ministry  responsible  to  a  Parliament  consisting  of  two 
Houses,  composed  on  highly  artificial  lines.  For  a  period 
of  fifteen  years  Southern  Unionists  were  to  be  repre- 
sented by  nominated  members,  while  Ulster  was  to  have 
extra  members  elected  by  special  constituencies  repre- 
senting    commercial     and     agricultural     interests.      The 

Subject   to    the   pviblication    of   a   Report   signed  by   Bishop 
O'Donnell,  and  these  in  agreement  with  him  reaffirmed  theii*  view. 


THE  CONVENTION   AND  THE   END         331 

Parliament  was  to  have  full  control  of  internal  legis- 
lation, administration  and  direct  taxation.  The  fixation 
of  customs  and  excise  was  to  be  from  Westminster, 
but  the  proceeds  of  these  taxes  to  be  paid  into  the  Irish 
Exchequer.  There  was  to  be  a  contribution  to  the  cost 
of  Imperial  defences,  and  representation  at  Westminster, 
but  a  representation  of  the  Irish  Parliament  rather  than 
of  the  constituencies.  All  of  this  was  agreed  to  at  our 
last  meeting,  and  nothing  could  have  been  more  pleasant 
than  the  atmosphere  of  good  will  which  prevailed.  But 
this  was  after  a  critical  division — the  most  critical  in 
which  I  have  ever  voted — in  which  those  of  us  National- 
ists who  were  for  accepting  the  Government  proposals 
voted  with  the  Southern  Unionists  and  those  who  were 
against  with  the  Ulster  group.  The  combination  of 
Ulstermen  and  extreme  Nationalists  was  tliirty-four 
strong  ;  those  who  adopted  Redmond's  policy  and  Lord 
Midleton's  were  thirty-eight.  We  had  in  our  lobby 
sixteen  of  the  Nationalist  County  and  Urban  Councillors  ; 
they  had  eleven. 

If  that  vote  had  gone  otherwise,  we  were  told  plainly 
that  the  Southern  Unionists  would  be  no  parties  to  the 
rest  of  the  compromise.  They  were  willing  to  recommend 
self-government  only  if  the  Convention  recommended 
the  reservation  of  customs  to  the  Imperial  Parliament. 
This  point  had  become  in  their  minds  important  even 
more  as  a  symbol  of  the  close  union  between  the  two 
kingdoms  than  by  reason  of  the  economic  advantages 
which  they  attributed  to  it. 

Once  the  sticking-point  was  passed,  the  divided 
Nationalists  recombined,  and  we  were  all  at  one  in  our 
mutual  felicitations  on  the  harmony  which  prevailed  at 
the  close.  But  as  one  of  our  rank  and  file  said  in  my 
ear,  "  If  we  had  not  given  the  vote  we  did,  where  would 
be  all  this  talk  of  harmony  ?  And  mind  you  now,  it 
was  not  easy  to  give  it." 

He  was  right,  and  within  six  months  it  cost  him  the 


332  JOHN   REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

chairmanship  of  his  County  Council.  Others  paid  the 
same  penalty,  I  am  sure,  without  grudging  it,  for  most  of 
us  were  prouder  of  that  action  than  of  any  other  in  our 
political  lives.  It  may  be  well  to  set  down  the  names  of  the 
local  representatives  and  Labour  men  who  voted  as 
Redmond  would  have  advised  on  that  first  crucial  division. 

They  were  :  W.  Broderick,  Youghal  Urban  Council  ; 
J.  J.  Coen,  Westmcath  County  Council  ;  D.  Condren, 
Wicldow  County  Council  ;  J.  Dooly,  Kings  County 
County  Council ;  Captain  Doran,  Louth  County  Council  ; 
T.  Fallon,  Leitrim  County  Council  ;  J.  Fitzgibbon,  Ros- 
common County  Council ;  Captain  Gwynn,  Irish  Party ; 
T.  Halligan,  Meath  County  Council ;  W.  Kavanagh, 
Carlow  County  Council  ;  J.  McCarron,  Labour ;  M. 
McDonogh,  Galway  Urban  Council  ;  J.  McDonnell,  Galway 
County  Council  ;  C.  McKay,  Labour  ;  J.  Murphy,  Labour  ; 
J.  O'Dowd,  Sligo  County  Council ;  C.  P.  O'Neill,  Pem- 
broke Urban  Council  ;  Dr.  O'Sullivan,  Mayor  of  Water- 
ford  ;  T.  Power,  Waterford  County  Council ;  Sir  S.  B. 
Quin,  Mayor  of  Limerick ;  D.  Reilly,  Cavan  County 
Council  ;  M.  Slattery,  Tipperary  (S.  Riding)  ;  H.  T. 
Whitley,  Labour. ^ 

In  so  far  as  we  were  led  by  anyone,  Mr.  Clancy,  ful- 
filling in  public  what  he  had  privately  spoken,  was  our 
leader  and  spokesman. 

We  were  along  with  the  Southern  Unionists  and  our 
natural  allies.  Lords  Granard  and  MacDonnell  and  Sir 
Bertram  Windle.  Archbishop  Bernard  and  Dr.  Mahaffy 
voted  with  us  in  that  pinch,  so  that  both  the  late  Provost 
of  Trinity  and  the  jDresent  one  did  their  part  to  secure 
an  agreement. 

In  the  other  list,  the  Archbishop  of  Armagh  and  the 

^  The  following,  though  Tinavoidably  absent  at  the  critical 
moment,  joined  with  us  :  M.  K.  Barry,  Cork  County  Council ; 
J.  Butler,  Kilkeimy  County  Council ;  Patrick  Dempsey,  Belfast ; 
M.  Governey,  Carlow  Urban  Council ;  M.  J.  Minch,  Kildare  County 
Coimoil, 


THE  CONVENTION  AND   THE   END         333 

Moderator  were  grouped  with  the  Archbishop  of  Cashel 
and  the  Bishops  of  Raphoe  and  Down  and  Connor ; 
the  Lord  Mayor  of  Cork  and  Lord  Mayor  of  Belfast  were 
together ;  Mr.  Devlin  was  with  Mr.  Barrie.  This  list 
represented  no  unity  except  a  common  refusal  to  agree 
to  any  compromise.  Those  who  voted  in  it  followed 
one  or  other  of  two  trains  of  cogent  reasoning  ;  but 
the  reasonings  led  to  opposite  conclusions.  These  men 
were  beyond  doubt  as  honest  in  their  convictions  as 
those  who  went  the  other  way  ;  but  they  took  the  easier 
course,  whether  they  were  Nationalist  or  Unionist : 
they  swam  with  the  tide. 

The  troubles  which  Nationalists  brought  on  themselves 
by  supporting  Lord  Midleton  were  answered  by  the 
troubles  which  his  group  met  for  supporting  Nationalist 
demands.  The  men  who  refused  to  make  the  compromise 
possible  have  the  laugh  of  us.  Neither  section  of  us  who 
voted  for  agreement  achieved  anything  by  facing  the  risk 
of  unpopularity.  We  had  followed  Redmond's  policy  and 
we  shared  Redmond's  fate.  We  had  done  our  best  to 
help  the  British  Government  and  that  Government  itself 
defeated  us. 

By  the  Prime  Minister's  letter  Government  was  pledged 
to  legislate  for  the  better  government  of  Ireland,  not 
upon  condition  of  our  reaching  substantial  agreement, 
but  in  any  event.  Yet  the  letter  emphasized  the  "  urgent 
importance  of  getting  a  settlement  in  and  through  the 
Convention."  We  had  secured  a  report  for  a  scheme 
in  which  sixty-six  out  of  eighty-seven  concurred  in  the 
broad  lines  ;  and  of  the  twenty-one  dissentients,  nineteen 
were  a  group  sent  to  the  assembly  with  a  pledge  which 
they  construed  as  giving  them  a  special  position,  in  that 
no  legislation  afifecting  them  was  to  be  passed  without 
their  concurrence.  The  agreement  which  we  had  reached 
enabled  the  Government,  when  it  undertook  legislation, 
to  quote  Unionist  authority  on  the  one  hand  and  National- 
ist authority  on  the  other  for  many  wise  provisions  which 


334  JOHN   REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 

otherwise  a  Coalition  Ministry  might  have  found  it  most 
difficult  to  propose. 

But  no  legislation  followed.  Once  more  an  Irish  issue 
became  involved  in  the  wheels  of  the  English  political 
machine. 

We  have  ourselves  in  part  to  thank  for  it.  We  might 
in  January  have  taken  Redmond's  advice,  and  Lord 
Midleton's  declared  view  that  legislation  would  follow 
might  have  proved  correct.  Yet,  what  use  are  might- 
have-beens  ?  History  is  concerned  with  what  happened, 
and  our  w'ork  in  the  Convention  dragged  itself  on  till 
the  great  German  offensive  had  been  launched  and  the 
Allied  line  pushed  back  to  the  very  gates  of  Paris,  and 
Government  was  at  its  wits'  end  for  men.  It  is  hard  to 
blame  a  Ministry  for  what  harm  was  done  in  the  frantic 
rush  to  cope  with  perhaps  the  most  critical  instant  in  all 
history  ;  but  what  was  done  produced  infinite  mischief 
and  no  good  result.  Immediately  after  the  Convention's 
report  (signed  upon  April  8th)  had  been  received.  Govern- 
ment proposed  to  apply  conscription  to  Ireland. 

It  is  said,  and  it  is  not  difficult  to  believe,  that  without 
making  this  proposal  they  dare  not  have  come  upon  the 
British  people  with  so  extreme  demands  for  compulsory 
service  as  were  made.  But  by  making  it  Ministers  tore 
up  and  scattered  in  fragments  whatever  results  the  Con- 
vention had  to  show  for  its  labours,  and  by  legislating 
for  conscription  in  Ireland  they  gained  not  one  man. 
The  proposal,  as  Redmond  had  always  told  them,  proved 
impossible  to  carry  out. 

I  do  not  believe  that  if  Redmond  had  lived  this  would 
ever  have  happened.  His  record  in  the  war  gave  him 
an  authority  in  Parliament  which  no  other  Irishman 
could  possibly  claim.  It  would  have  been  impossible 
for  Mr.  Lloyd  George  to  take  such  a  step  without  giving 
him  notice  ;  and  once  that  notice  came,  Redmond  could 
have  insisted  upon  the  significance  of  the  report  of  the 
Convention's    sub-committee   on    questions   of    defence. 


THE  CONVENTION  AND   THE   END         335 

This  committee  consisted  of  two  civilians  and  three 
soldiers.  Lord  Desart,  a  Unionist,  was  in  the  chair  ; 
Mr.  Powell,  K.C.,  a  Unionist  (afterwards  Irish  Solicitor- 
General  and  now  a  judge),  was  the  other  civilian  ;  the 
soldiers  were  the  Duke  of  Abercorn,  an  Ulster  Covenanter, 
with  Captain  Doran  and  myself,  Nationalists  from  the 
Sixteenth  Division.  We  found  unanimously  that  if  an 
Irish  Parliament  existed,  whatever  might  be  the  claims 
of  the  Imperial  authority,  it  would  be  impracticable  to 
impose  conscription  without  the  Irish  Parliament's  consent. 
This  unanimous  finding  was  bound  to  influence  the  view 
of  any  Ministry,  no  matter  how  hard  pressed.  But,  as 
debate  revealed,  Mr.  Lloyd  George  had  never  heard  of  it. 

I  believe  that  Redmond  could  have  persuaded  Mr. 
Lloyd  George  to  adopt  in  Ax)ril  the  course  on  which — 
but  after  the  harm  was  done — he  fell  back  in  June,  when 
Lord  French  asked  for  a  large,  but  limited,  number  of 
recruits  to  refill  the  Irish  Divisions  within  a  specified 
time — at  the  end  of  which  time,  failing  the  production 
of  the  volunteers,  other  measures  must  be  taken.  Here, 
however,  we  are  back  in  the  region  of  speculation.  Con- 
scription was  proposed  and  anarchy  let  loose  in  Ireland. 
Redmond's  words,  "  Better  for  us  never  to  have  met 
than  to  have  met  and  failed,"  stand  as  the  final  sentence 
on  this  notable  episode  in  Irish  history. 

That  is  the  Convention's  epitaph  as,  I  think,  he  would 
have  written  it.     How  shall  we  write  his  own  ? 

No  attempt  has  been  made  in  this  book,  and  none  shall 
be  made,  to  represent  him  as  a  hero.  But  there  are 
certain  attributes  which  malice  itself  can  scarcely  deny 
him.  All  his  ideals  were  generous.  His  love  of  country, 
the  master-motive  in  his  life,  had  nothing  in  it  exclusive 
or  tribal  or  partisan.  His  was  a  policy  forward-looking 
and  constructive  ;  without  narrowness  or  jealousy,  it 
aimed  to  bring  the  destinies  of  Ireland  into  the  hands 
of  Irishmen,  not  greatly  caring  what  Irishmen  they  were 
— indeed,  if  they  were  in  a  real  measure  responsible  to 


336  JOHN  REDMOND'S   LAST   YEARS 

Ireland,  not  caring  at  all.  In  tliis  spirit  lie  grasped 
masterfully  at  the  chance  which  the  war  offered  ;  in 
this  spirit,  he  went  out  to  meet  his  fellow-countrymen 
in  the  Irish  Convention. 

And  not  only  towards  his  countrymen  was  he  mag- 
nanimous. His  love  of  Ireland  was  free  from  all  attendant 
hates.  His  resentment  was  never  on  private  grounds, 
and  it  was  without  rancour.  He  spent  his  whole  life  in 
opposition,  and  was  not  embittered  ;  his  mind  remained 
constructive  after  thirty  years  spent  in  criticism.  His 
experience  of  political  life  and  of  English  Ministers  had 
rid  him  of  any  credulous  faith  in  mankind  ;  yet  his 
instinct  was  always  to  perceive  the  best  in  men.  The 
friend  who  knew  him  best  in  Convention,  and  who  had 
seen  him  in  his  darkest  hours  then  and  long  ago,  said 
this  of  him  :  "  He  was  always  an  optimist."  The  speaker 
did  not  mean — he  could  not  have  meant — that  in  those 
last  months  Redmond  was  sanguine.  He  meant,  I 
think,  that  he  had  faith  ;  that  in  a  country  where  sus- 
picion is  the  prevailing  disease,  he  credited  men  with 
honest  motives  and  with  his  own  love  of  Ireland. 

If  he  went  wrong  at  any  time,  he  went  wrong  by  too 
generous  a  judgment  of  other  men,  too  open-handed  a 
policy.  Perhaps,  too,  he  may  have  erred — it  was  his 
characteristic  defect — in  not  pressing  his  policy  upon 
others  with  more  vehemence.  He  had  not  the  tempera- 
ment which,  when  once  possessed  with  an  idea,  rests 
neither  night  nor  day  in  pursuit  of  it  and  spares  neither 
others'  labour  nor  its  own  to  carry  the  conception  into 
effect.  There  was  an  element  of  inertia  in  his  nature, 
and  of  the  ordinary  self-seeking  motives  which  impel 
men  not  a  trace.  Ambition  he  had  none — none,  at  all 
events,  in  the  last  ten  or  fifteen  years,  during  which  I 
have  known  him.  As  for  vanity,  I  never  saw  a  man  so 
entirely  devoid  of  it.  His  modesty  amounted  to  a  defect, 
in  that  he  always  underestimated  his  personal  influence. 
A   man   less   single-minded,   vainer,    more   ambitious   of 


THE  CONVENTION   AND   THE   END        337 

success,  might  with  the  same  gifts  have  achieved  more 
for  Ireland  in  thrusting  towards  a  personal  triumph. 
A  man  with  more  love  for  the  homage  of  crowds  might 
have  kept  himself  in  closer  touch  with  the  mass  of  his 
following. 

The  way  of  life  to  which  he  was  committed  was  in 
its  essence  distasteful  to  him.  I  do  not  believe  that 
history  shows  an  example  of  a  statesman  who  served 
his  country  more  absolutely  from  a  sense  of  duty. 

All  this  might  be  admitted  without  conceding  great- 
ness to  him.  But  he  was  a  great  man,  unlike  others, 
cast  in  a  mould  of  his  own.  Without  the  least  affecta- 
tion of  unconventionality,  and  indeed  under  a  formal 
appearance,  he  was  profoundly  unconventional.  His 
tastes,  whether  in  literature,  in  art,  in  the  choice  of 
society,  in  the  choice  of  his  way  of  life,  were  utterly  his 
own,  unaffected  by  any  standard  but  that  which  he 
himself  established.  Without  subtlety  of  interpretation, 
his  judgments  cut  deep  into  the  heart  of  things.  You 
could  not  hear  him  speak,  could  not  be  in  his  presence, 
without  feeling  the  weight  of  his  personality. 

A  statesman,  if  ever  there  was  one,  he  was  never  given 
the  opportunity  of  proving  himself  in  administration  ; 
he  can  be  judged  only  by  his  gifts  in  counsel  and  by  his 
power  of  guiding  action.  As  a  counsellor,  he  was  supreme. 
He  had  that  faculty  for  anticipating  the  future,  that 
broad,  far-reaching  vision  of  the  chain  of  events  which 
can  proceed  only  from  long,  deep  and  constant  thought, 
and  which  is  truly  admirable  when  united,  as  it  was  in 
him,  to  a  sovereign  contempt  for  this  or  that  momentary 
outcry.  In  these  qualities  of  insight  and  foresight  I 
have  only  seen  one  man  approach  him,  the  late  Sir  Henry 
Campbell-Bannerman,  to  whose  credit  stands  the  greatest 
work  of  Imperial  reconciliation  accomplished  in  our  day. 
But  Redmond  had  supremely  what  the  wise  old  Scotsman 
lacked — the  gift  of  persuasive  speech,  to  win  acceptance 
for  his  wisdom  and  his  vision. 

23 


338  JOHN   REDMOND'S   LAST  YEARS 

He  could  persuade,  but  he  could  not  compel.  His  was 
not  the  magnetism  which  constrains  allegiance  almost 
in  despite  of  reason — the  power  which  was  possessed  by 
his  first  and  only  leader,  Parnell.  Redmond's  appeal 
was  to  men's  judgment  and  convictions,  not  to  those 
instincts  which  lie  deepest  and  are  most  potent  in  the 
heart  of  man.  That  was  the  limitation  to  his  greatness. 
He  could  lead  only  by  convincing  men  that  he  was  right. 

If  in  the  end  it  is  true  he  failed  to  convince  his  country- 
men and  failed  to  carry  them  with  him,  this  book  has 
told  what  difficulties  were  set  in  his  way,  not  so  much 
by  those  who  desired  a  different  end  than  his,  but  by 
those  who  desired  the  same  end.  Yet  admit  that  he 
failed  and  that  he  fell  from  power.  No  man  holds  power 
for  ever,  and  during  seventeen  continuous  years  he  held 
the  leadership  among  hia  own  people  with  far  more 
than  all  the  personal  ascendancy  of  a  Prime  Minister  in 
one  of  the  oversea  Dominions  ;  and  he  held  it  without  any 
of  the  binding  force  which  control  of  administration  and 
patronage  bestows.  He  left  his  people  improved  in 
their  material  circumstances  to  an  almost  incredible 
degree,  as  compared  with  their  state  when  he  began 
his  work. 

Yet  Ireland  counts  his  life  a  failure,  and  he  most 
assuredly  accepted  that  view  ;  for  he  died  heartbroken, 
not  for  his  own  sake  but  for  Ireland's,  because  he  had 
not  won  through  to  the  goal.  His  action  upon  the  war 
was  his  life's  supreme  action  ;  he  felt  this,  and  knew 
that  it  had  failed  to  achieve  its  end.  By  that  action 
let  us  judge  him,  for  all  else  is  trivial  in  comparison 
beside  it. 

It  is  said  by  his  critics  that  he  bargained  badly.  If 
reply  were  made  that  he  believed  the  Allied  cause  to 
be  right  and  desired  to  lead  his  country  according  to 
his  conception  of  justice,  we  should  be  answered  that 
he  was  in  charge  of  his  country's  interests,  not  of  her 
morals ;    and    he  would    have  admitted    an  element    of 


THE   CONVENTION   AND  THE   END        339 

truth  in  this.  Yet,  as  in  the  Boer  War  he  had  led  his 
countrymen  to  support  what  he  conceived  to  be  the 
right  cause,  even  with  certain  injury  to  their  own,  so 
now  assuredly  he  would  not  have  acted  as  he  did,  had 
he  not  been  convinced  that  Ireland's  honour  was  to 
be  served  as  well  as  her  advantage. 

But  when  there  is  talk  of  bargaining,  it  is  well  to  con- 
sider what  he  had  to  bargain  with.  No  one  in  August 
1914  anticipated  the  course  of  the  war.  No  one  foresaw 
the  need  for  the  last  man  available.  It  was  more  than 
a  year  before  Great  Britain  could  even  equip  the  men 
who  pressed  themselves  forward  for  service.  All  that 
he  really  had  in  his  hand  to  give  or  to  withhold  was  the 
value  of  Ireland's  moral  support.  Could  he  by  waiting 
his  time  have  made  a  better  bargain  ? 

When  that  critical  hour  came,  Redmond  knew  in  his 
bones  the  weight  of  Ireland's  history  ;  he  knew  all  the 
propensities  which  would  instantly  tend  to  assert  them- 
selves, unless  their  play  was  checked  by  a  strong  counter- 
emotion.  He  knew  that  if  Ireland  said  nothing  and  did 
nothing  at  the  crisis,  things  would  be  said  of  Ireland 
which  would  rapidly  engender  rising  passion  ;  and  with 
the  growth  of  that  passion  all  possibility,  not  of  bargain- 
ing but  of  controlling  the  situation  between  the  two 
countries  would  be  gone.  In  plain  language,  if  he  had 
not  acted  at  once,  his  only  chance  for  action  would  have 
been  in  heading  an  Ireland  hostile  to  England.  In  this 
war,  with  the  issue  defined  as  it  was  from  the  outset, 
he  could  only  have  done  this  by  denying  all  that  he 
believed.  But  apart  from  his  judgment  of  the  merits, 
there  was  his  purpose  of  unity  to  be  served.  Ulster  was 
the  difficulty  ;  all  other  obstacles  were  disposed  of.  How 
could  he  hope  for  an  Ulster  united  to  Ireland,  if  Ulster 
were  divided  from  Ireland  on  the  war  ? 

Everything  depended  on  an  instant  and  almost  desper- 
ate move.  He  might  have  left  the  sole  offer  of  service 
from  Ireland  to  lie  with  Sir  Edward  Carson.     What  he 


840  JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST   YEARS 

did  actually  was  to  offer  instantly  all  that  the  Ulstermen 
had  offered,  and  more,  for  he  proposed  active  union  in 
Ireland  itself.  It  was  a  bold  stroke,  but  it  was  guided 
by  an  ideal  perpetually  present  with  him — the  essential 
unity  of  Ireland.  To  set  Irishmen  working  together  at 
such  a  crisis  in  the  common  name  of  Ireland  Avas  an 
object  for  which  he  was  willing  to  jeopardize  the  whole 
organization  which  stood  behind  him,  at  a  moment  when 
he  could  speak  of  full  right  for  three-fourths  of  his 
countrymen.  And,  when  he  is  called  a  failure,  let  it 
be  remembered  that  in  this  he  did  not  fail. 

This  fight  is  not  yet  ended,  the  long  battle  is  not  lost. 
Had  Ireland  from  the  first  stood  aloof,  had  she  been 
drawn  at  the  wear's  opening  into  the  temper  which  she 
displayed  in  its  closing  stages,  then  indeed  we  might 
despair  of  any  hopeful  issue,  any  genuine  peace  between 
these  two  neighbouring  islands,  and,  what  matters  in- 
finitely more,  between  the  strong  yet  divergent  strains 
that  make  up  Ireland  itself. 

But  as  the  mists  of  passion  clear  and  deeds  rather 
than  words  come  into  sharp  light,  it  will  be  seen  and 
realized  that  for  a  thousand  Irishmen  who  risked  their 
lives  to  defeat  Redmond's  effort  there  were  fifty  thousand 
who  at  his  summons  took  on  themselves  far  greater 
hardships  and  faced  dangers  far  more  terrible.  By 
them  we  take  our  stand — we  who  followed  Redmond, 
who  believed  and  still  believe  in  his  wisdom.  We  wish 
no  word  of  his  last  years  unspoken,  no  act  undone  by 
that  great  and  generous-hearted  Irishman  in  the  supreme 
period  of  his  life.  In  his  defeat  and  ours,  we  accept  no 
defeat ;  we  shall  endeavour  to  keep  our  will  set,  as  his 
was,  for  a  final  triumph  which  can  mean  humiliation 
for  no  Irish  heart.  Tangled  as  are  the  threads  of  all 
his  policy,  he  leaves  the  task  far  nearer  to  accomplish- 
ment than  he  found  it ;  and  if  in  the  end  freedom  and 
prosperity  come  to  a  united  Ireland,  they  will  be  found 
to   proceed — however  deeply  overlaid    by  years   and  by 


THE  CONVENTION  AND  THE  END        341 

events  may  be  the  chain  of  causation — from  the  action 
which  John  Redmond  took  in  August  1914,  and  upon 
which  his  brother,  with  a  legion  like  him,  set  the  seal 
of  his  blood. 

To  have  served  long  and  faithfully  without  reward — 
to  have  given  all  of  life  to  one  high  purpose — to  have 
faced  a  great  crisis  greatly — these  are  claims  enough 
for  Redmond  that  the  allegiance  of  his  comrades  and 
followers  may  be  justified  when  it  is  judged.  The  grave 
has  closed  over  him,  and  the  rest  is  for  us  to  do,  that 
a  coping-stone  may  be  set  on  his  life's  labours,  and  that 
reparation  final  and  conclusive,  for  what  he  suffered 
undeservedly,  may  yet  be  offered  to  the  dead. 


INDEX 


Agar-Robartes,  Mr.,  68-9 
Ancient  Order  of  Hibernians,  259 
Arniy — 

Irish  Brigades  raised  for  the 
War- 
Sixteenth  Division,  staffing 
of,  174,   187-8  ;    develop- 
ment of  opinions  in,  188  ; 
10th    Division    made    up 
from,  1 94-5  ;    proceeds  to 
France,  200-1  ;    in  action, 
230,  241 ;  Messines,  264-5  ; 
Ypres,  306 
Tenth  Division,  195 
Tyneside  Battalions,  190 
Ulster    Division,    201  ;     on 
the    Somme,    240 ;     Mes- 
sines, 264-5  ;    Ypres,  306 
Irish  Nationalist  attitude  to, 

140-1 
Irish     recruiting — Redmond's 
efforts,  154-5,  158,  170-9, 
185,  191-2,  199,  202,  207, 
211  ;    efforts  handicapped 
by       Government,       163, 
175-6,    177,    190-1,    206; 
letter     to     Birrell,     160 ; 
Sinn      Fein      propaganda 
against,  219 
Irish  Regulars*  achievements, 
150;    in  Gallipoli,   195  ff. 
Ulster  sympathies  of,  83,  99, 
104  ff.  ;     the  Curragh  in- 
cident, 105-9 
Ashe,  Thomas,  300-2 
Asquith,    H.     H.,    struggle    of, 
with     House     of     Lords, 
43-6,    50 ;      on     indivisi- 
bility of  Ireland,  69,  72  ; 


Ladybank  speech,  (Oct., 
1913),  85  ;  War  Minister, 
109 ;  response  to  Red- 
mond's National  Defence 
offer,  138,  143;  on  Ulster 
preparations  for  resisting 
Home  Rule,  148  ;  fails 
Redmond,  153,  167  ;  re- 
cruiting speech  in  Dublin, 
155-7  ;  the  Coalition, 
192 ;  Redmond's  letter 
to,  against  conscription, 
208-9 ;  the  Rebellion, 
226  ;  reports  on  his  visit 
to  Ireland,  232  ;  breaks 
faith  with  Redmond, 
239-40  ;  displaced,  244  ; 
estimate  of,  87,  93  ;  men- 
tioned, 30,  34,  41,  73,  138, 
139 
Aughavanagh,  37-9,  267 

Balfour,  A.  J.,  55-6 

Balfour,  G.,  23 

Barrie,  Mr.,  271,   304,   308,   321 

Beatty,  Admiral,  158 

Bernard,  Dr.,  Abp.  of  Dublin, 
272,  310,  318;  three 
points  of,  291  ff. 

Biggar,  Joseph,  6 

Birrell,  A.,  Redmond's  letter  to, 
on  the  Volunteers,  160  ; 
on  Kitchener's  attitude 
to  Irish  National  Volun- 
teers, 162  ;  Appreciation 
of  Redmond  quoted,  162, 
194  ;  the  Rebellion, 
219-20 ;  mentioned,  31, 
69,  139,  198 


3ii 


344 


JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 


Blake,  E.,  24 
Brade,  Sir  R.,  203 
Budget  of  1909-10,  42,  47 
Butler,  Sir  W.,  5 
Butt,  Isaac,  6 

Campbell,  Sir  James,  219 
Campbell-Bannerman,     Sir     H., 

34,  337 
Carson,  Sir  E.,  the  Covenant 
demonstrations,  72 ; 
moves  exclusion  of  Ulster, 
75  ;  on  Ulster  and  the 
Army,  105  ;  on  possibility 
of  persuading  Ulster,  114; 
the  Speaker's  Conference, 
121  ;  attitude  to  Home 
Rule  enactment,  148-9  ; 
joins  the  Coalition,  192-3  ; 
interpretation  of  exclu- 
sion proposals,  234  ;  re- 
fuses joint  platform  at 
Newry,  200  ;  kills  Volun- 
teer Bill,  208  ;  on  con- 
scription for  Ii'eland,  210, 
211  ;  final  victory  against 
Redmond,  240  ;  tempera- 
mental attitude  to  Home 
Rule,  96-7  ;  quoted,  67, 
71,  80-1,  83,  100;  appeal 
on  Ulster's  claim,  97-8  ; 
mentioned,  89,  229,  260, 
263 

Casement,  Sir  Roger,  116,  221, 
223;   qvioted,  115,  118 

Castletown,  Lord,  24 

Cecil,  Lord  Hugh,  50 

Cecil,  Lord  Robert,  115 

Chamberlain,  Austen,  102 

Churchill,  Winston,  Belfast 
speech  of  (1912),  62,  67  ; 
devolution  proposal,  71  ; 
Bradford  speech  (1914), 
103-4  ;  the  Larne  gim- 
running,  113  ;  mentioned, 
77,  84 

Citizen  Army,  the,  180,  183 ; 
the  Rebellion,  218 


Clark,  Sir  George,  271-2 
Clarke,  — ,  execution  of,  224 
Clancy,  J.  J.,  269,  318,  332 
Coalition  formed,  192-3 
Coercion,  8-9,  16,  82 
Colthvu-st,  Capt.,  228,  231 
Commons,    House   of,    Parnell's 
obstruction  in,  6  ff.  ;  pay- 
ment   of    members,     52  ; 
scene  after  passing  Home 
Rule   Bill,    152;     disgust 
of,  at  Redmond's  defeat, 
240 ;       Redmond's     esti- 
mate  of,    12  ;   his  famili- 
arity with.  111 
Congested  Districts  Board,  28 
Connolly,  James,  183  ;    the  Re- 
bellion, 218,  224 
Conscription,   Redmond's   oppo- 
sition    to,     208  f¥.,     242, 
247-8  ;    application  of,  to 
Ireland,  334 
Convention,  see  Irish  Convention 
Craig,  Capt.,  51,  70,  105  ;  quoted, 

95 
Crooks,  Will,  152 
Crozier,   Dr.,   Abp.    of   Armagh, 
198,    272,   279,   300,    302, 
310,  330 
Curragh  incident,  105-9 
Ciirzon,  Col.,  187 

Dalton,  Miss  (Mrs.  John  Red- 
mond), 14,  20 

Davitt,  Michael,  8,  19 

Davitt  (young),   116 

de  Robeck,  Admiral,  despatch 
of,  195-6 

de  Valera,  E.,  268,  269 

Desart,  Lord,  273,  318 

Devlin,  J.,  in  Redmond's  "  inner 
cabinet,"  25,  36  ;  his 
supporters'  disappoint- 
ment on  compromise,  109  ; 
recruiting  successes  of, 
177,  179  ;  indispensable 
in  Ireland,  183 ;  carries 
Belfast     Convention     for 


INDEX 


345 


Devlin,  J.  {continued) — 

exclusion  proposals,  235  ; 
on  the  Irish  Convention, 
269,  304,  310,    322  ;   esti- 
mate of,  21  ;    Redmond's 
estimate   of,    235  ;     men- 
tioned, 48,  84,  155,  263 
Devolution,  28,  71 
Dillon,  John,  relations  with  Red- 
mond,   25,   36  ;    on  coer- 
cion, 82  ;  an  Irish  Volun- 
teer      movement,       115  ; 
speech  on  suppression  of 
the   Rebellion,    231  ;     de- 
clines   to    serve    on    the 
Irish     Convention,     269  ; 
mentioned,   16,   100,   109, 
121,  129,  155 
Doran,  Capt.,  274-5 
Doyle,  Sir  A.  Conan,  cited,  131-2 
Dublin  strike  (1913),  90,  273 
Duke,  Sir.  H.  E.,  240,  275 
Dunraven,  Lord,  27,   28,  77  ;  on 
the  Convedtion,  273,  282, 
317-lS,  330 

Ewart,  Sir  S.,  108 

Field,  William,  24 

Financial  Relations  Conxmission, 

24,  75 
Fingall,  Lord,  174 
Forster,  W.  E.,  79 
Franchise  Bill  (1917),  302,  304-5, 

311 
French,  Sir  John,  107,  108 
Friend,  General,  198 

Gallipoli,  Irish  troops  in,  195  ff. 
General  Elections — 
1906,  43 

1910  (Jan.),  43-4 
1910  (Dec),  49 
1918,  231 
George  V,  King,  121 
George,  D.  Lloyd,  non -Irish  pre- 
occupations of,  41-2 ;  Con- 
ciliation mission  after  the 
Rebellion,     232 ;      a^ee- 


George,  D.  Lloyd  (continued) — 
ment  with  the  Irish,  234  ; 
agreement  thrown  over, 
239 ;  Redmond's  hopes 
from,  as  Premier,  244-5  ; 
on  Irish  distrust,  246  ; 
supports  the  "  two  na- 
tions"  theory,  255;  the 
Convention,  260 ;  letter 
to  Plunkett,  324  ;  con- 
ference with  Convention 
representatives,  325  ;  pro- 
posals to  the  Convention, 
326  ff.  ;  quoted  on  Ulster, 
73 

Gladstone,  W.E.,  11,  17,  42,  130, 
317;  breach  with  Parnell, 
18-19  ;   retirement,  23 

Gladstone,  W.  G.  C,  66 

Gough,  Gen.,  quoted,  105  ff. 

Government,  delays  of,  185, 
236-7,  244,  247  ;  general 
attitude  to  Redmond,  see 
under  Redmond 

Granard,  Lord,  273,  282 

Grey,  Earl,  78 

Grey,  Lord  (Sir  Edward),  Ulster 
proposals  of,  85,  86 ; 
speech  on  oiitbreak  of 
War,  128-30 ;  quoted, 
66  ;    mentioned,  30,  108 

Harbison,  Mr.,  270 

Harty,  Abp.  of  Cashel,  270 

Hayden,  Mr.,  38,  130-1 

Hazleton,  Mr,,  14 

Healy,  T.  M.,  retiu-ned  for  Wex- 
ford,  7-8  ;  attacks  on 
Redmond  and  Nationalist 
Party,  34,  273  ;  opposi- 
tion to  county  option, 
100,  111-12;  declines  to 
serve  on  Convention,  269  ; 
quoted,  256  ;  mentioned, 
15,  16,  47,  49 

Hickie,  Maj.-Gen.  W.  B.,  201,  265 

Hills,  Maj.-Gen.,  268 

Hobson,  Biilmer,  quote-d,  115, 159 


346 


JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 


Home  Rule  Bill  (1912),  demon- 
strations for  and  against, 
62  ;  National  Convention, 

65,  66  ;    Ulster's  attitude, 

66,  67  £f.  ;  exclusion  pro- 
posals, 68,  78,  84,  99  ; 
devolution  proposals,  71  ; 
Unionist  converts,  73  ;  in 
Committee,  68,  74  ;  finan- 
cial arrangements  under, 
74-5  ;  Report  stage,  75  ; 
Third  Reading,  77  ;  in 
the  Lords,  77  ff.  ;  tliird 
Introduction  (1914),  99; 
inadequate  private  dis- 
cussion of,  by  Irish  Party, 
100-1  ;  the  Amending 
Bill,  121,  126;  the 
Speaker's  Conference, 
121  ff.  ;  amending  Bill 
postponed,  126 ;  opera- 
tion of,  to  be  deferred, 
148-9  ;  Royal  assent, 
151  ;  Asquith's  move  to- 
wards securing  immediate 
operation  of,  after  the 
Rebellion,  232  ;  O'Con- 
nor's demand  for,  249 

Hopwood,  Sir  Francis,  275 

Industrial  depression  in  Ireland 

under  the  War,  184 
Irish  at  the  Front,  The,  quoted, 

201 
Irish  Brigades,  see  under  Army 
Irish  Convention — 

Committee  of  Nine,  304,  307, 

310 
Financial  considerations,  285, 
286,     293-5,     307,     309  ; 
Lord  Midleton's  proposals, 
312-23;     Lloyd   George's 
proposals,  326-32 
First  meeting  of,  271 
Fraternization  between  repre- 
sentatives, 286-7 
Grand  Committee  of  Twenty, 
301,  303,  307,  311 


Irish  Convention  {continued) — 
Inception  of,  258,  260 
Intermediate    Authority    pro- 
posal, 285-6 
Land  Purchase   Sub -Commit- 
tee, 304,  317 
Personnel  of,  271  ff. 
Preliminaries,  269 
Procedure  adopted,  280 
Reports  presented  by,  330 
Sinn  Fein  attitude  to,  263-4, 

267-8 
Spirit  of,  279-80 
Ulster    representatives,     atti- 
tude of,  321  ;   attitude  to 
Redmond,    323  ;     Report 
presented  by,  330 
Irish  Council  Bill  (1907),  31  ff., 

78 
Irish  Independent,  273,  330 
Irish  Party,  discipline  of,  12-13  ; 
personnel   of,    59  ;     Red- 
mond's    relations     with, 
59-61 
Irish      relations       with       Eng- 
land most  cordial  (1916), 
213 
Irish  suspicion,  189-90 
Irish      Volunteers,      Redmond's 
policy      repudiated      by, 
155-6  ;      collisions     with 
National  Volunteers,  180  ; 
Rebellion  of  1916,  218  ff. 
{See  also  National  Volun- 
teers) 

Jameson,  Andrew,  271,  298 
Judge,  M.  J.,  cited,  132 

Kavanagh,  W.  M.,  274,  318 
Kelley,   Dr.,   Bp.   of  Ross,   270, 

293,  310,  323 
Kenny,  Dr.,  38 
Ker,  S.  P.,  quoted,  202 
Kettle,    Prof.,    T.    M.,    14,    93 

recruiting  work  of,    186 

killed     in     action,     241 

estimate  of,  185 


INDEX 


347 


Kitchener,  Earl,  attitude  of,  to 
Irish  Vokmteers,  138-40, 
153,  160,  162,  175,  181  ; 
Redmond's  interview 
with,  on  recrvTiting,  198-9, 
205 ;  letter  on  Irish  recruit- 
ing, 199  ;  estimate  of,  138 

Knight,  Mr.,  294-5 

Labour  Party,  44,  87,  108 

Land  Act  (1909),  41 

Land  League,  8 

Land  Purchase,  17,  27-8 

Lang,  Dr.,  Abp.  of  York,  on 
Ulster,  78-80 

Lansdowne,  Marquis  of,  29,  236, 
238 

Larkin,  James,  90,  183,  273 

Larne  Gun-rimning,  112-14 

Law,  A.  Bonar,  speeches  of,  on 
Ulster,  65,  70;  Ulster 
pohcy,  77,  83,  87,  99, 
163  ;  protest  against 
enactment  of  Home  Rule, 
149  ;  quoted  on  Major 
Willie  Redmond,  245 ; 
estimate  of,  55 ;  men- 
tioned, 132,  178 

Liberal  Party,  13,  29 

Lincolnshire,  Marquis  of.  Volun- 
teer Bill  of,  205.  208 

Liquor  trade  in  Ireland,  42 

Local  Government  Act  (1897),  24 

Long,  W.,  quoted,  216 

Longford  Election,  257,  259 

Lonsdale,  Sir  John,  263 

Lords,  House  of.  Veto  contro- 
versy, 42  ff.,  50,  52,  57  ; 
Conference,  48 

Loreburn,  Lord,  84 

Lynch,  Arthur,  129 

Lysaght,  Edward,  273,  282,  296, 
301-2 

McCarthy,   Jxistin,    13 ;   quoted, 

26 
McCullagh,  Sir  C,  294 
MacDermott,  Dr.,  272 


MacDonagh,  201  ;  the  Rebellion, 
218,  224 

MacDonnell,  Sir  Anthony,  devo- 
lution scheme  of,  28-9  ; 
supports  Home  Rule  Bill, 
78 ;  in  the  Convention, 
273,  282,  310,  317 

McDowell,  Sir  Alexander,  272, 
303-4,  307-8 

MacNeill,  Prof.,  promotes  Na- 
tionalist arming,  93  ;  vol- 
unteer following  of,  180; 
the  Rebellion,  219  ;  cited, 
164,  180-1  ;  mentioned, 
64,  116 

jMacRory,  Dr.,  Bp.  of  Down  and 
Connor,  270 

MacSweeney,  Capt.,  153 

Mahaffy,  Dr.,  Provost  of  Trinity, 
272,  330 

Maxwell,  Sir  John,  225-6 

Meath,  Lord,  158,  169 

Midleton,  Lord,  271,  273,  285, 
296,  304,  308 ;  Customs 
proposals,  310  ff. 

Mooney,  J.  J.,  21,  38 

Moore,  Lt.-Col.  M.,  159-60,  203 

Murphy,  W.  M.,  273,  282,  295, 
304,  315,  317 

Nathan,  Sir  M.,  220 

National  Volunteers,  establish- 
ment of,  91-2,  94-5,  99  ; 
Redmond's  adhesion  to, 
114;  foniiidable  charac- 
ter of,  114-15;  com- 
mittee difficiilties,  111  fi.  ; 
Bachelor's  Walk  affair, 
123-5;  Redmond's  offer 
of,  for  National  Defence, 
134  ff.,  203  ff.;  general 
response,  136-8  ;  demand 
for  recognition,  153, 
159-61,  202-3  ;  refused, 
153,  162,  167,  181,  203, 
207-8,  222  ;  secession  of 
Irish  Volunteers  from, 
155 ;      Asquith's     pledge 


348  JOHH  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 


National  Vokmteers(confmwe(?) — 
regarding,  157  ;  Review 
of,  in  Phoenix  Park,  204  ; 
Bulmer  Hobson's  History 
of,  quoted,  115,  159 

O'Brien,  Patrick,  38,  267 
O'Brien,    William,    attacks    by, 
on     Redmond     and     Na- 
tional Party,  34  ;   opposi- 
tion to  Budget  (1  GOO).  42, 
47  ;    to  Home  Rule   Bill 
(1912),     74;      to    county 
option,    100,    111-12;    to 
the  Convention,  263  ;  de- 
clines to  serve,  269 
O'Cathasaigh,  Mr.,  cited,  01 
O'Connor,  "  Long  John,"  3S 
O'Connor,  T.  P.,  Canadian  tour 
1910,  48  ;    recruiting  suc- 
cesses of,  190  ;  motion  for 
immediate    Home    Rule, 
249  ;     cited,    203 ;     men- 
tioned, 25,  100,  130-1 
O'Donnell,  Dr.,  Bp.  of  Raphoe, 
270,   284,   294,   303,    304, 
308,  310,  312,  330  ;  speech 
on  Papal  Decrees,  299-300 
Orann:iore,  Lord,  313,  319 

Paget,  Gen.  Sir  Arthur,  105  f¥. 
Parliament,    see    Commons    and 

Lords 

Parnell,  C.  S.,  6-13,  17-19,  92  ; 

property  of,  7,  37  ;  power 

of,      58 ;       anecdote      of 

Willie       Redmond       and 

House  of  Commons,  249 

Parnellites,  19-21,  23-25  ;  fusion 

of,  withanti-Parnellites,  25 

Parsons,  Lt.-Gen.  Sir  L.,  170  ff., 

200-1,  204-5 
Pearse,  Patrick,  speech  of,  in 
Dublin,  63-4 ;  Limerick 
speech,  quoted,  94 ;  se- 
cedes from  National  Vol- 
unteers, 118  ;  the  Rebel- 
lion, 218,  222-3  ;  execu- 
tion, 224 


Phoenix  Park  murders,  14 

Pigott,  18 

Pii-rie,  Lord,  293 

Plunket,  Count,  248 

Plunkett,  Lord  (Sir  Horace), 
Conference  scheme  of 
(1895),  23;  the  Conven- 
tion, 274,  302,  309  ;  as 
Chairman,  279 ;  Lloyd 
George's  letter  to,  324 

Poe,  Col.  Sir  Hutcheson,  145 

Pollock,  Mr.,  272,  299,  308 

Primate,  the,  see  Crozier 

Primrose,  Neil,  68-9 

Primrose  Committee,  270,  293-4 

Protestant  Ascendency,  86,  96, 
101 

Raymond  Le  Gros,  2-3 
Rebellion,    Redmond's    attitude 

to,  3 
Rebellion  of  1916,  218-19,  221, 
227  ;    denounced  by  Red- 
mond,   223-4 ;     siippres- 
sion  of,   224-9  ;    Govern- 
ment's fomentation  of  dis- 
affection,    227-9  ;      com- 
parison with  South  Afri- 
can   Rebellion    (1914), 
225 
Recruiting,  see  under  Army 
Redmond,  John  Edward,  4 
Redmond,  John — 

Ancestry  and  family  of,  2-4 
Career — education,  5  ;  clerk- 
ship in  the  House,  6 ; 
returned  for  New  Rose, 
8  ;  Parliamentary  debut, 
9-11  ;  Australian  and 
American  mission,  14 ; 
marriage,  14 ;  second 
American  mission,  17  ; 
imprisoned  (1888),  17  ; 
chosen  leader  of  Parnel- 
lites, 19  ;  returned  for 
Waterford,  19  ;  attitude 
to  Roman  Catholic 
Church,     20 :      widowed, 


INDEX 


349 


Redmond,  John  (continued) — 
20 ;  second  marriage, 
21-2;  work  with  Plim- 
kett,  23-4  ;  on  Com- 
mission on  Financial  Rela- 
tions, 24  ;  Chairman  of 
United  Irish  Party,  25, 
58  ;  his  inner  cabinet,  25, 
58,  100 ;  attitude  to 
Irish  Covincil  Bill,  31-3  ; 
campaign  for  Home  Rule 
(1907),  34-5;  House  of 
Lords  controversy,  45-6, 
57  ;  "  Dollar  Dictator," 
48  ;  the  Nottingham 
Meeting  (1912),  73  ;  Home 
Rule  campaign  (1912) 
following  Carson,  84  ;  on 
proposed  exclusion  of 
Ulster,  85-6  ;  attitude  to 
National  Volunteers,  92  ; 
speeches  on  the  Ulster 
position,  98,  99,  102, 
109-11  ;  the  Ulster  gun- 
running,  114  ;  relations 
with  National  Volunteers 
thereafter,  114  ft'.;  the 
Speaker's  Conference, 

121-2 ;     speech    on    out- 
break   of    War,     132  ff.  ; 
offers   the  Volunteers   for 
national  defence,  134  ff.  ; 
Recruiting  manifesto  ,151; 
refuses  office  in  Coalition 
Government,  192  ;    inter- 
view with  Kitchener  on 
recruiting,  198,  205  ;  Con- 
ference      at       Viceregal 
Lodge,       198-9  ;       visits 
Irish  troops  at  the  Front 
201-2  ;  opposes  Conscrip 
tion  for  Ireland,   208  ff. 
letter    to    Asquith,    208 
Rebellion  of  1916,  219  ff. 
Govermnent     breach     of 
faith,  238-40  ;  moves  vote 
of    censure,    243  ;     criti- 
cizes Lloyd  George,  245  ; 


Redmond,  John  (continued) — 

renewed  opposition  to 
conscription,  248 ;  tho 
Smuts  dinner,  257  ;  the 
Convention,  258,  261-3  ; 
death  of  his  brother,  256  ; 
death  of  Pat  O'Brien, 
267  ;  in  the  Convention, 
278-9 ;  relations  with 
Nationalist  representa- 
tives, 283-4  ;  speech  in 
Belfast,  289  ff.  ;  at  West- 
minster, 304  ;  speech  on 
vote  of  thanks  to  the 
Forces,  305-6  ;  Meetings 
of  Committee  of  Nine, 
307  ff.  ;  ill -health,  257, 
282,  312,  322  ;  attitude 
to  Lord  Midleton's  pro- 
posals, 316,  318-21  ; 
tables  motion  condition- 
ally accepting,  321  ;  with- 
draws owing  to  Nation- 
alist opposition,  322-3  ; 
illness,  325 ;  operation, 
328  ;    death,  329 

Characteristics — 

Ambition,  lack  of,  40,  336 
Caution,  282 
Com-tesy,  26,  35 
Eloquence,  41,  88 
Lucidity,  41,  53,  59 
Moderation,  3,  11 
Modesty,  36,  336 
Optimism,  74 
Peaceable      temperament 
and  tolerance,    21,    25, 
26,  35,  88 
Rest,  love  of,  38 
Reticence,  37 
Romantic  strain,  37 
Self-abnegation,  278,  280 
Sensitiveness,  243,  282 
Tact,  88 
Trustworthiness,  194 

Comparison  of,  with  Campbell- 
Bannerman,  337  ;  with 
Parnell,     338  ;      position 


360 


JOHN  REDMOND'S  LAST  YEARS 


Redmond,  John  (continued) — 

Comparison  (continued) — 

compared  with  that  of 
Botha,  158,  172,  184,  212, 
224 

Estimate  of,  335  ;  Birrell's 
estimate,  194 ;  Healy's 
tribute,  256  ;  estiniate  as 
leader,  59-61,  283,  310, 
338  ;  estimate  of  his 
work,  338-41 

Government  shghting  of,  and 
disregard  of  his  advice, 
153,  163,  167,  175-6,  190- 
1,  220,  226,  229,  238-9; 
instances  of  bad  faith,  153, 
239-40,  246  ;  recruiting 
efforts  handicapped,  163, 
175-6,   177,   190-1,  206 

House  of  Commons  life  of.  111 

Imperialism  of,  15 

Irishmen,  attitiide  towards, 
27,  63 

MiUtary  sympathies  of,  107-8 

Oratorical  style  of,  5 

Recruiting  efforts  of,  see  under 
Army 

Status  of,  in  Ireland,  171-2 

Social  isolation  of,  13 

Stephens''  attack  on,  276-7 

War  policy  of,  132,  216 
Reimond,  Major  "  Willie," 
Australian  missioii  and 
marriage,  14  ;  impris- 
oned (1888),  17  ;  returned 
for  East  Qare,  20;  War 
service,  182-3,  185, 
213-14,  230  ;  position  in 
his  regiment,  188-9  ; 
speeches  in  the  House 
quoted,  215-16,  245  ;  ad- 
vises resignation  of  Par- 
liamentary party,  259  ; 
last  speech  in  the  House, 
249-54  ;  killed  in  action, 
61,  265  ;  estimate  of,  249  ; 
mentioned,  4,  13,  19,  38, 
118,  128 


Redmond,  Major  William  Archer, 
4,  185  ;  on  the  Somme, 
240  ;  wins  D.S.O.,  306  ; 
returned  as  Nationalist 
in  1918  election,  231 

Redmond,  William  Archer,  4,  5, 
7 

Richardson,  Gen.,  163 

Roberts,  Lord,  176 

Roman  Catholic  Church,  49,  187 

Russell,  George  ("  A.E."),  in 
the  Convention,  274,  282, 
304,  310,  312 

Sclater,  Sir  Henry,  204-5 
Selborne,  Lord,  236 
Seely,  Col.,  108-9 
Sexton,  Th.,  16,  24 
Shaw,  Mr.,  6 

Sheehy-Skeffington,  Mr.,  228,  231 
Sinn  Fein — 

Convention    ignored    by, 

263-4,  267-8 
Demonstration  by,  at  funeral 

of  Thomas  Ashe,  300 
Electoral    successes    of,     231, 

257,  268,  278 
Growth  of,  from  May  1916,  232 
Propaganda,  suspicion  fostered 

by,  189 
Rebellion    of     1916,    see    that 
heading 
Smith,  F.  E.,  quoted,  95 
South  African  War,  24 
Stephens,  James,  quoted,  276-7 

Taylor,  Capt.,  J.  S.,  27 
Tennant,  H.  J.,  198,  206 
Thomas,  J.  H.,  108 
Times  forgeries,  18 

Ulster- 
Administrative  autonomy  pro- 
posal, 85,  86 
Arms  iinportation  by,  81,  94  ; 
Larne  gun  -  running,  1 12-14 
Asquith's  moratorium  conces- 
sion to,  149 


INDEX 


351 


Ulster  (continued) — 

Belfast  Convention  (1916),  235 

Churchill's  speech  (1912),  62 

Convention,  the  (1917),  repre- 
sentatives at,  271-2,  285  ; 
their  attitude  and  pro- 
cedure, 281,  299 

County  option  proposals,  77, 
85,  99  ff.  ;  difficulties  of 
the  scheme,  101 

Covenant,  the,  72  ;  military 
covenanters,  83 

Exclusion  proposals,  68,  78, 
84,  233-4  ;  embodied  in 
the  Bill,  99  ;  time  limit 
discussions,  101-3  ;  Coun- 
cil of  1916  accepts  exclu- 
sion proposals,  235 

Favouritisin  applied  to,  95, 
120,  123,  125,  164,  169, 
170,  174 

Friendly  relations  with  Na- 
tionalists, 51 

Home  Rule,  resistance  to, 
65,  67  ft.  ;  Parliamentary 
majority  for,  77  ;  distri- 
bution of  Home  Rulers,  101 

Inseparability  of,  69,  76-7,  84 

Lloyd  George's  scheme,  234 

Protestant  ascendency,  86,  96, 
101 

Provisional  G  o  v  e  r  n  na  e  n  t 
formed,  80,  83 


Ulster  (continued) — 

Rebellion  preparations  of,  148 
Redmond's  efforts  to   concili- 
ate, 76-7,   109-10,  114 
War,  attitude  on  outbreak  of, 
130  ;    mistrustful  of  Irish 
Volunteers,  142 
United    Irish    League,    58,    259, 

261 
University  Act  (1908),  41 

Vatican  Decrees,  49 

Wallace,  Col.,  299 

Walsh,  Abp.,  267 

War- 
Outbreak,  126  ff. 
Redmond's    policy   regarding, 
132,      216  ;       Nationalist 
criticism    of,    276-7    (see 
also  Army,  reci-uiting) 
Ulster's  attitude,  130,  142 

W^ard,  Col.  John,  108 

Waterford,  19 

Wexford,  3 

What  the  Irish   Regiments   have 
done  quoted,  202 

White,  Capt.,  J.  R.,  90-1 

Whitley,  H.  T.,  320 

Wicklow  surroundings,  37-9 

Wimborne,  Lord,   198,   199,  205 

Windle,  Sir  B.,  282,  330 

Wyndham,  G.,  27-9 


Trinied  in  Great  Britain  by 

UNWIN  BKOTHEES,   LIJnTED 
■WOKIXa  AND  LONDON 


DATE  DUE 

UNIVERSITY  PRODUCTS,  INC.   #859-5503 


3   9031    027  01564 


